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Fried Rabbit

A dish of rabbit pieces fried in butter and served with a lemon‑flavored gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Fried Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Blanch the rabbit in boiling water for 5-7 minutes to remove any mustiness, then drain.

  2. Once cool, cut the rabbit into joints.

  3. Dip each joint in beaten egg, then coat with seasoned bread crumbs.

Fry and make the sauce

  1. Fry the coated rabbit joints in butter over medium heat for 12-15 minutes until golden brown.

  2. Simmer lemon rind in a little gravy until well flavored.

  3. Boil the rabbit liver for 5 minutes, cool, and mince it.

  4. Thicken the gravy with 1 ounce of butter and 1 teaspoon of flour, then add the minced liver.

  5. Boil the sauce for 1 minute, stir in cream if using, and add lemon juice to taste.

Serve

  1. Serve the fried rabbit with the sauce poured over it.

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

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

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Rabbit + creamtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together409 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 main meat, which is cooked through while the coating turns golden.
Eggs
Bind the bread crumbs to the rabbit joints so the coating adheres during frying.
Fine bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns when fried in butter.
Butter
Fries the coated joints and adds richness and browning to the crust.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so the sauce coats the rabbit rather than running off.
Cream
Adds richness and smoothness to the sauce, and is optional.

The step that matters

Blanch the rabbit before frying. Blanching in boiling water removes the musty flavor that can carry through to the finished dish, so the meat tastes clean once fried.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Coconutfits less well
  4. Figfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, egg, bread, pepper, butter, flour, cream. 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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