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To Pot Rabbits

Rabbit pieces seasoned with salt, pepper, mace, cayenne, allspice, baked for two days, finished with butter and livers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,395 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

To Pot Rabbits

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the leg bones from the rabbits at the thigh.

  2. Keep the heads and carcasses aside, but remove meat from the neck.

Pack and season

  1. Pack the rabbit pieces tightly in a small pan, seasoning with salt, black pepper, mace, cayenne, and allspice.

  2. Smooth the top of the packed rabbit.

  3. Add a generous amount of butter on top.

Bake and pot

  1. Bake gently for two days in the pan.

  2. After two days, transfer to small pots, adding more butter and the livers.

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 + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mace + allspicetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-pentylpyridine (fat).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit
Provides the meat that becomes tender and rich during slow, gentle cooking.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, coating the meat to keep it moist during long baking.
Mace
Contributes a warm, aromatic flavour to the packed meat.
Allspice
Adds a warm, aromatic spice note that deepens the savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Bake gently for two days in the pan.. Low, slow heat breaks down the connective tissue in the rabbit so the meat becomes tender, while the butter keeps it from drying out. Too much heat would toughen and dry the meat.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, pepper, allspice, 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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