Skip to main content
Main

Rabbit, Larded and Braised

Rabbit larded with bacon and braised in stock with butter, flour, and bouquet garni.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Rabbit, Larded and Braised

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and dry the rabbit pieces thoroughly.

  2. Lard each piece by inserting thin strips of larding bacon.

Cook

  1. Heat the dripping in a stewpan and fry the rabbit quickly until lightly browned.

  2. Drain away the fat and cover the rabbit with stock.

  3. Add salt, pepper, and the bouquet garni tied in muslin.

  4. Cover closely and cook gently for 1 to 1.5 hours, or until the rabbit is tender.

  5. Knead the butter and flour together, then add it in small pieces to the stewpan about 20 minutes before serving.

  6. Serve with the sauce strained 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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Rabbit
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle simmering.
Larding bacon
Adds fat and moisture inside the lean rabbit meat as it cooks.
Stock
Forms the cooking liquid that gently braises the rabbit and flavours the sauce.
Butter and flour
Kneaded together, they thicken the cooking liquid into a smooth sauce.

The step that matters

Cook gently with the lid closed. Gentle, covered simmering keeps lean rabbit meat moist and tender; a hard boil toughens the proteins and dries the meat.

Swap the thyme

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

  1. Thymethe original
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Marjoramfits less well

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

You might also like

Rabbit PattiesRabbit Patties6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes