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Roast Rabbit

A rabbit stuffed with breadcrumbs, beef suet, lemon peel, nutmeg, pepper, salt, lemon thyme, coated in butter and flour, topped with bacon, roasted with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,973 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Roast Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stuffing

  1. Mix bread crumbs, minced beef suet, lemon peel, nutmeg, pepper, salt, and lemon thyme (if using) to make a forcemeat.

  2. Beat the eggs and mix them with the forcemeat to form a paste.

Stuff and shape the rabbit

  1. Stuff the forcemeat inside the rabbit.

  2. Sew the rabbit up.

  3. Skewer the rabbit into shape.

  4. Rub the outside of the rabbit with butter.

  5. Dust the rabbit lightly with flour.

  6. Attach thin slices of bacon to the rabbit using small skewers.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast the rabbit.

  2. Baste the rabbit regularly until cooked through and the bacon is crisp.

  3. Make gravy using a small piece of beef or the rabbit livers, if not roasted inside.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,907 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the forcemeat into a paste that holds its shape during roasting.
Bread crumbs
Add bulk to the stuffing and absorb moisture from the suet and eggs.
Minced beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the stuffing moist and rich as it roasts.
Thin slices of bacon
Lay over the rabbit to add fat that bastes the meat and crisps the surface.
Butter
Adds fat that helps the outside brown and turn golden in the oven.

The step that matters

Baste the rabbit regularly. Rabbit is lean and dries out easily, so regular basting with its fat and juices keeps the meat moist while the bacon crisps and the surface browns.

“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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