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Sauce

Sauce for Roasted Rabbits

A sauce made from boiled rabbit livers, butter, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Rabbit and lemon work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 626 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Sauce for Roasted Rabbits

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the livers

  1. Boil and finely mince the livers of the rabbits.

  2. In a small saucepan, melt some butter.

Make the sauce

  1. Add the minced livers and squeeze in the juice of ½ lemon.

  2. Heat the mixture until very hot and serve in a sauce boat.

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. Rabbit + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together626 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Liver + rabbittop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together233 recipes

    Shared aroma: geraniol (rose, geranium).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Liver + buttertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit livers
Form the body of the sauce and supply its rich, savoury flavour and fine texture.
Butter
Adds fat that carries flavour and gives the sauce a smooth, rich mouthfeel.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich liver flavour and cuts through the fat.

The step that matters

Heating the mixture until very hot. Liver proteins tighten when overheated, so the sauce can turn grainy and dry. Heat until hot enough to serve, and avoid boiling it hard.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Applefits about as well
  3. Coconutfits less well
  4. Grapefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, rabbit, 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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