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Pilau of Rabbit

A rice dish cooked with rabbit, onions, ginger, lemon, butter, milk, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pilau of Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Cut up the rabbit or fowl.

  2. Pound the onions in a mortar and extract the juice.

  3. Mix the onion juice with ginger, salt, and lemon juice.

  4. Rub this mixture into the meat.

Cook the meat and rice

  1. Slice 2 onions and fry them in butter until brown.

  2. Remove the fried onions from the pan.

  3. Add the meat to the pan and let it stew with the fried onions.

  4. Half boil the rice in broth.

Bake in a jar

  1. In a jar, combine the meat, fried onions, half-boiled rice, milk, peppercorns, cloves, and additional salt.

  2. Secure the jar and bake until done, adding broth if needed to moisten.

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. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Onion + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,595 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

Rabbit or fowl
Provides the meat that becomes tender during stewing and baking.
Butter
Fries the onions to a brown color and adds richness to the dish.
Rice
Absorbs the broth and milk as it finishes cooking, forming the body of the pilaf.
Onions
Browning in butter builds sweetness and savory depth, while the juice flavors the meat.
Milk
Adds moisture and mild richness that gently cooks the rice during baking.

The step that matters

Secure the jar and bake until done, adding broth if needed to moisten. A sealed jar traps steam, so the rice and meat cook in their own moisture. If the liquid runs short, the rice can scorch or dry out, so checking and adding broth keeps the dish moist.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, ginger, lemon, butter, rice, milk, clove):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, ginger, lemon, butter, rice, milk, clove. 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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