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Polpettes of Rabbits, a L’lTALIENHE

Polpettes of Rabbits, A L’Italiane is a meatball dish with mushrooms, parsley, shallots, Parmesan, nutmeg, Veloute sauce, egg yolks, and breadcrumbs, fried in clarified butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Polpettes of Rabbits, a L’lTALIENHE

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Remove the meat from the cooked rabbits and chop it finely.

  2. In a stewpan, combine the rabbit meat, mushrooms, parsley, shallots, Parmesan, nutmeg, and Veloute sauce.

  3. Heat the mixture over low heat until well combined.

  4. Stir in the egg yolks and spread the mixture into a square about ½ inch thick on a dish.

  5. Once cooled, cut out circular shapes using a tin cutter about 1½ inches in diameter.

Bread and fry

  1. Bread the Polpettes twice using the usual method.

  2. Heat clarified butter in a pan and fry the Polpettes until lightly colored.

  3. Drain on a napkin and arrange in double circular rows on a plate.

  4. Pour some brown Italian sauce underneath and serve.

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 + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Mushroom + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Shallot + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,019 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Mushroom + parmesan cheesetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,199 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (apple, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked rabbits
Provide the main meat, bound into a soft, savoury filling.
Parmesan cheese
Adds salty, savoury flavour and helps the filling hold together when cooled.
Egg yolks
Bind the filling so it sets firm enough to cut into rounds.
Veloute sauce
Adds moisture and richness so the filling stays tender rather than dry.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns when fried.

The step that matters

Cooling before cutting. The egg yolk mixture must cool and set fully before cutting; cutting warm filling makes it soft and misshapen, so the rounds lose their form.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, mushroom, parsley, shallot, parmesan cheese, sauce, egg):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, mushroom, parsley, shallot, parmesan cheese, sauce, egg. 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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