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Boast Rabbit

A stuffed rabbit filled with liver, ham, bread crumbs, thyme, onion, pepper, and salt, roasted and basted.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,585 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Boast Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stuffing

  1. Parboil the rabbit liver with the ham or pork.

  2. Chop the liver, ham, bread crumbs, thyme, onion, pepper, and salt together.

Stuff and season

  1. Fill the rabbit's body with the mixture and sew it up.

  2. Rub the outside with sweet oil or butter.

Roast and serve

  1. Place butter in a pan with water for basting.

  2. Baste the rabbit frequently while roasting.

  3. Roast for 1.5 hours.

  4. Serve with mashed potatoes and 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. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  2. Thyme + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  4. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Absorb juices and bind the chopped stuffing together.
Rabbit liver
Adds rich, savory flavor to the stuffing mixture.
Fat ham or sweet salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor that keeps the stuffing moist.
Butter
Adds fat for richer flavor and gentle browning on the outside.

The step that matters

Baste the rabbit frequently while roasting. Rabbit is very lean and dries out quickly. Regular basting with melted butter and water keeps the surface moist and helps it brown evenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, liver, ham, bread, thyme, pepper, butter):

  1. Mustardfits about as well
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Onionthe original
  4. Leekfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, liver, ham, bread, thyme, pepper, butter. 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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