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Fried Rabbit

Fried rabbit with butter, pepper, salt, and parsley sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Fried Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Fry the rabbit

  1. Heat butter in a pan over medium heat.

  2. Add the rabbit joints and fry slowly until they are a nice brown.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a separate saucepan, dissolve a little butter.

  2. Add pepper, salt, and chopped parsley to the melted butter.

  3. Heat the sauce without boiling it.

  4. Pour the sauce over the fried rabbit 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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Rabbit + parsleytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

  5. Rabbit + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,334 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-pentylpyridine (fat).

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit
Is the main protein, which browns and firms as it fries slowly in butter.
Butter
Fats for frying, carrying browning flavour and giving the sauce its richness.
Parsley
Adds fresh, green aroma to the butter sauce.

The step that matters

Heat the sauce without boiling it. Butter sauces made with milk solids can separate or turn grainy and burnt if boiled. Gentle heat keeps the butter emulsified and smooth.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Sagefits about as well
  4. Tarragonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, butter, 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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