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Rabbit Cutlets

Rabbit cutlets made from boiled rabbit, bacon, lemon peel, mace, onion, egg white, optional cream and breadcrumbs, served with sauce and vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the meat

  1. Boil the rabbit until cooked, then remove the meat from the bones.

  2. Return the bones to the saucepan with some of the cooking liquid, and boil for 1 hour with lemon peel, mace, and onion.

  3. Chop the rabbit meat and mix it with bacon, a little lemon peel, nutmeg, salt, and pepper in a bowl.

  4. Add the egg white and beat until smooth.

  5. For white cutlets, add cream and bread crumbs.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the mixture into cutlets using your hands and a knife, inserting a rib bone into each cutlet.

  2. Grease a baking dish with butter, place the cutlets inside, and cover with buttered paper.

  3. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 10 minutes, ensuring they do not brown.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Thicken some of the cooking liquid with butter rolled in flour, adding salt, cayenne pepper, and a little cream.

  2. Strain the sauce over the cutlets and serve with your choice of vegetables.

  3. For brown cutlets, dip them in egg and bread crumbs, then fry until golden 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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Rabbit + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,292 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (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 cutlets and provides their savoury flavour.
Egg white
Binds the chopped meat together so the cutlets hold their shape.
Bacon
Adds fat that keeps the lean rabbit meat moist and flavourful.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and add body to the mixture, giving a softer texture.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness to the cutlet mixture and the sauce.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and, rolled in flour, thickens the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Bake without browning. Baking at a moderate heat, covered with buttered paper, cooks the lean meat through while keeping it pale. Browning or over-baking dries the meat and toughens the texture.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, lemon, onion, egg, cream, bread, pepper):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, lemon, onion, egg, cream, bread, 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.

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