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Roast Rabbit

A rabbit seasoned, stuffed with bread crumbs and butter, roasted with fat pork and served with lemon garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 887 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Roast Rabbit

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderately hot oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Soak the rabbit in salt water for 30 minutes, then rinse in cold water and dry.

  2. Rub the inside with salt.

Stuff and season

  1. Fill with a mixture of bread crumbs, butter, pepper, salt, and sage.

  2. Sew up the opening and place the rabbit in a roasting pan.

  3. Sprinkle the outside with pepper and salt.

  4. Lay thin slices of fat salt pork on top.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C).

  2. Baste frequently with butter and water.

  3. Cook for a little over an hour, ensuring it is well cooked.

  4. Garnish with lemon slices and thicken the gravy to serve in a sauceboat.

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. Sage + lemontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together887 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

  3. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  4. Rabbit + porktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together832 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit
Provides the lean meat that the roasting cooks through and that the dish is built around.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the stuffing and helps the surface brown while roasting.
Bread crumbs
Soak up butter and juices in the stuffing, keeping it moist and tender.
Fat salt pork
Lays fat over the rabbit, basting it as it melts and keeping the lean meat moist.
Sage
Adds an earthy, aromatic flavour to the bread stuffing.

The step that matters

Cook for a little over an hour, ensuring it is well cooked. Rabbit is very lean, so it dries out quickly, yet it must be cooked through. Checking doneness rather than relying only on time keeps the meat moist and safe to eat.

“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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