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Rabbit, Boned and Roasted

A roasted rabbit stuffed with buttered mushrooms, seasoned with salt, pepper, lemon peel, nutmeg, and served with brown gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Rabbit, Boned and Roasted

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Remove the gills from the rabbit and cover the back with slices of bacon.

Stuff and roast

  1. Fill the rabbit with tiny mushrooms cooked in butter, seasoned with salt, pepper, lemon peel, and nutmeg.

  2. Sew up the rabbit and roast it, basting with the butter from the mushrooms.

Finish the gravy

  1. Prepare brown gravy and flavor it with mushroom ketchup or add pickled mushrooms.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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 and carries the stuffing and roasting juices.
Slices of bacon
Lays fat over the back of the rabbit, keeping the lean meat moist and adding savory flavor as it renders.
Butter
Cooks the mushrooms and then basts the roast, adding richness and helping the surface brown.
Tiny mushrooms
Form a savory, moist stuffing that adds earthy flavor inside the rabbit.
Brown gravy
Adds moisture and savory depth to the finished plate.

The step that matters

Basting the roast with the mushroom butter. Lean rabbit dries out quickly in the oven. Regular basting with the fat keeps the meat moist and helps the surface brown evenly.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, butter, mushroom, pepper, lemon):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, butter, mushroom, pepper, lemon. 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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