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To Roast Rabbits

Roasted rabbits with butter, flour, liver, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

To Roast Rabbits

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.

Roast the rabbits

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

  2. Baste the rabbits with butter and dust them with flour.

  3. Roast the rabbits for 30 minutes, or 20 minutes if they are small.

Make the liver mixture

  1. Boil the liver with the parsley, then chop them finely together.

  2. Melt some butter in a pan and add half of the liver and parsley mixture.

Serve

  1. Pour this mixture into a serving dish and garnish with the remaining liver and parsley.

  2. Ensure the rabbits are cooked to a fine light brown.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  4. Rabbit + livertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together233 recipes

    Shared aroma: geraniol (rose, geranium).

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbits
Form the main body of the dish, cooking to tender, lean meat.
Butter
Adds fat and moisture, helping the rabbits brown in the oven and in the pan.
Flour
Dusted over the rabbits, it helps form a light golden crust as they roast.
Liver
Contributes rich, deep flavour and a smooth, spreadable texture when chopped.
Parsley
Adds a fresh, herbal aroma that lightens the richness of the liver.

The step that matters

Roast the rabbits for the right time. Rabbit meat is very lean, so overcooking dries it out quickly. Smaller rabbits need the shorter 20-minute time, so check their size before roasting.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, butter, flour, liver):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Sagefits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, butter, flour, liver. 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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