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Roast Rabbit or Hare

Roast rabbit stuffed with veal forcemeat, bacon, and served with gravy, forcemeat balls, and red currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Veal and liver match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 392 recipes. Both carry enoic acid, which smells butter, cheesy. The science ↓

Roast Rabbit or Hare

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Wipe the rabbit with a clean dishcloth.

  2. Stuff the rabbit with the veal forcemeat.

  3. Sew or skewer the rabbit closed.

  4. Fasten the head upright.

  5. Draw the hind legs forward.

  6. Draw the fore legs back.

  7. Secure the rabbit with a skewer and string.

  8. Lay a piece of fat bacon over the back.

Roast

  1. Heat 2 tablespoons of dripping in a tin.

  2. Add the rabbit to the tin.

  3. Roast for about 1 hour, basting well.

  4. Once cooked, place the rabbit on a hot dish.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Pour off the fat from the tin.

  2. Add ½ pint of stock made from the liver of the rabbit. Stir well.

  3. Season with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  4. Thicken with ½ tablespoon of flour mixed with cold water. Boil again.

  5. Strain the gravy around the rabbit.

  6. Add a glass of port wine.

  7. Serve with fried forcemeat balls and red currant jelly.

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. Veal + livertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together392 recipes

    Shared aroma: enoic acid (butter, cheesy).

  2. Port wine + red curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Pepper + red curranttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together267 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Rabbit + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Liver + port winetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together108 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked whole and tender after roasting.
Veal forcemeat
Stuffing that adds moisture and richness to the lean rabbit as it roasts.
Fat bacon
Laid over the back to baste the lean meat and keep it moist while roasting.
Dripping
Fat for the tin that carries heat evenly and helps the outside brown.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the rabbit rather than running thin.

The step that matters

Thicken with flour mixed with cold water. Flour added directly to hot liquid forms lumps; mixing it smoothly with cold water first lets the starch disperse and thicken the gravy evenly.

Swap the red currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, veal, liver, flour, pepper, port wine):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Red currantthe original
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Applefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, veal, liver, flour, pepper, port wine. 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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