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Roasted Rabbit

A rabbit stuffed with a mixture of heart, liver, pork fat, thyme, onion, pepper, salt, bread crumbs, and egg, then roasted.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,585 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Roasted Rabbit

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Soak the cleaned rabbit in salt water for 1 hour.

  2. Parboil the heart and liver.

  3. Mince the heart, liver, and fat salt pork together.

  4. Add thyme, onion, pepper, salt, and moistened bread crumbs to the mixture.

  5. Mix the mixture with the beaten egg.

  6. Stuff the rabbit with the filling.

  7. Sew up the rabbit.

Roast the rabbit

  1. Rub the body with butter or tie slices of fat pork over it.

  2. Place 1 cup of water in the dripping pan.

  3. Baste the rabbit often with the water.

  4. Roast the rabbit for about 1 hour.

  5. Dredge the rabbit with flour before removing from the oven.

  6. Pour melted butter over the rabbit when browned.

  7. Transfer the rabbit to a hot dish.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. For the gravy, add lemon juice to the drippings.

  2. Add minced onion to the drippings.

  3. Add a smooth mixture of flour and butter to the drippings.

  4. Boil the gravy.

  5. Serve the gravy in a gravy dish.

  6. Garnish the rabbit with lemon slices and parsley.

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. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Thyme + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Liver + porktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,606 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).

  5. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 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, cooked whole so the stuffing stays moist inside.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture from the filling and give it a soft, cohesive texture.
Beaten egg
Binds the minced filling together so it holds its shape when stuffed.
Fat pork
Adds fat that bastes the meat and keeps the lean rabbit from drying out.
Flour
Dredged on the rabbit to help form a browned crust, and thickens the gravy.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the outside brown during roasting.

The step that matters

Basting the rabbit often with water. Rabbit is very lean and dries out quickly in dry oven heat. Regular basting keeps the surface moist and helps the drippings and flour develop color and flavor.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, liver, pork, thyme, pepper, bread, egg):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, liver, pork, thyme, pepper, bread, egg. 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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