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Young Rabbits , Fried

Fried rabbit pieces seasoned with salt, cayenne, onion, parsley, lemon, coated in flour, eggs, breadcrumbs, and fried in hog's lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Young Rabbits , Fried

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Divide the rabbits into medium-sized pieces.

  2. In a bowl, season the rabbit pieces with salt and cayenne pepper.

  3. Add the minced onion, parsley, and lemon juice; let marinate for 2 hours.

  4. Drain the rabbit pieces on a cloth.

Bread and fry

  1. Coat them in flour, then dip in beaten eggs and bread crumbs.

  2. Heat hog's lard in a pan; fry the back pieces separately from the leg pieces until cooked through.

  3. Drain the fried pieces and serve on a folded napkin with piquant sauce.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking to tender meat when fried through.
Flour
Dries the surface so the egg and crumb coating adheres and browns evenly.
Beaten eggs
Act as a binder that holds the bread crumbs to the rabbit pieces.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden browned crust when fried.
Hog's lard
Conducts heat for frying and adds fat that browns the coating.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour during marinating.

The step that matters

Fry the back pieces separately from the leg pieces. Back and leg pieces differ in thickness and bone content, so they cook at different rates. Frying them separately lets each reach doneness without overcooking the thinner pieces or leaving the thicker ones raw inside.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, pepper, parsley, lemon, flour, egg, bread):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, pepper, parsley, lemon, flour, egg, bread. 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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