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Fried Rabbit

A rabbit cooked by frying in butter and finished with sweet cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Fried Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the rabbit in cold water for 2-3 hours.

  2. Cut off the legs and divide the body into 3-4 pieces.

  3. Dry the pieces with a cloth.

  4. Dredge the rabbit pieces in flour.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the rabbit in hot butter until golden brown, then remove the rabbit from the pan.

  2. Pour the sweet cream into the pan and heat the cream through.

  3. Pour the heated cream over the rabbit.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Rabbit + creamtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together409 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Rabbit + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,448 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Coats the pieces so they brown in the butter and form a crisp outer crust.
Butter
Conducts heat for frying and browns the coated rabbit, adding rich flavor.
Sweet cream
Adds moisture and richness when heated and poured over the fried rabbit.

The step that matters

Fry the rabbit in hot butter until golden brown. Butter browns quickly and can scorch, so the heat must be controlled. Flour coating browns through the Maillard reaction, giving flavor and color. Dry pieces brown better than wet ones, which is why drying them first matters.

“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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