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Fried Rabbit

Fried rabbit with a butter and lard sauce, served hot with lemon garnish.

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. Boil the cleaned rabbit in water for 10 minutes.

  2. Drain and let it cool, then cut into joints.

Fry the rabbit

  1. Dip each joint in beaten egg, then coat with bread crumbs, seasoning with salt and pepper.

  2. Fry the joints in a mixture of butter and sweet lard over moderate heat until browned on both sides.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Remove the rabbit and thicken the remaining fat with flour.

  2. Stir in the milk or cream and bring to a boil.

  3. Pour the sauce over the fried rabbit and serve hot, garnished with sliced lemon.

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

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

  4. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 by boiling before frying.
Beaten egg
Acts as a glue so the bread crumbs stick to the joints.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned coating on the outside of the joints when fried.
Flour
Thickens the cooking fat into a smooth base for the sauce.
Milk or cream
Adds moisture and richness to the sauce, which is made from the pan fat.
Butter and sweet lard
Fat for frying that browns the coating and adds flavour.

The step that matters

Fry the joints until browned on both sides. The coating needs steady moderate heat to brown without burning. Too hot and the crumbs darken before the rabbit is heated through; too cool and the coating absorbs fat and turns greasy.

“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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