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To Fry Rabbits

A dish of rabbit pieces fried in butter and served with a cream or egg yolk gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Fry Rabbits

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the rabbits well and soak them in cold water for 2–3 hours.

  2. Cut the rabbits into joints and dry them with a cloth.

  3. Dredge the joints with flour and sprinkle with chopped parsley.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the rabbits in butter until golden brown.

  2. Remove from the pan and stir in cream or beaten egg yolk into the gravy without boiling.

  3. Pour the gravy over the rabbits and serve.

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

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Rabbit + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Coats the rabbit joints, helping them brown and thickening the gravy.
Butter
Fat for frying that browns the flour coating and adds rich flavour.
Cream or egg yolk
Enriches the gravy, adding body and a smooth, silky texture.

The step that matters

Stir in the cream or egg yolk without boiling. Egg yolk proteins thicken gently with heat but scramble if boiled, leaving the gravy grainy. Cream can also separate when boiled, so it should be stirred in off the heat.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, flour, butter, 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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