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Jugged Rabbits

A dish of rabbits cooked in gravy with salt pork, onion, parsley, currant jelly, and browned flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Rabbit and pork work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 832 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Jugged Rabbits

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbits

  1. Skin and clean the rabbits carefully, then joint them.

  2. Layer thin slices of salt pork in the bottom of a stoneware jar.

  3. Add pieces of rabbit and sprinkle with minced onion and parsley; repeat layers until all ingredients are used.

  4. Pour 1 cup of gravy over the layered ingredients, cover the jar tightly, and place it in the oven.

Cook and finish

  1. Cook for 2 hours or longer until the meat is tender.

  2. Once done, arrange the meat on a hot dish.

  3. Strain the gravy into a basin and cool it in cold water for 1 minute to separate the fat.

  4. Remove the fat, add 2 teaspoons of currant jelly and a little browned flour mixed with water, then boil and pour over the rabbits.

  5. Serve hot.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Rabbit + porktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together832 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Rabbit + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,292 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Rabbits
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender through long, slow, covered cooking.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor as it slowly renders into the meat and gravy.
Gravy
Keeps the meat moist during braising and forms the base of the finishing sauce.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a touch of acidity to balance the rich gravy.
Browned flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the rabbit pieces.

The step that matters

Cooling the strained gravy to separate the fat. Fat rises and solidifies as the gravy cools, so a brief chill lets you lift it off cleanly. Leaving too much fat makes the sauce greasy and can keep the thickened gravy from tasting clean.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, pork, onion, parsley, flour):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, pork, onion, parsley, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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