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Rabbit

A young rabbit cooked with bacon, served on toast or fried bread with lemon, watercress and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and watercress match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 579 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Prepare the rabbit by removing the trail and livers.

Make the liver topping

  1. Cook the trail and livers in a small pan with a little butter, then pound them.

  2. Season the pounded trail and livers with salt and pepper.

  3. Spread the mixture on toast just before serving the rabbit.

Cook and serve

  1. Cook the rabbit with bacon until done, about 10-15 minutes.

  2. Serve the rabbit on toast or fried bread.

  3. Garnish the rabbit with lemon and watercress.

  4. Send gravy to the table.

  5. Send fried crumbs to the table.

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. Lemon + watercresstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together579 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + watercresstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together983 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Rabbit + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together626 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit
Is the main protein, cooked until done so the meat becomes tender and firm.
Bacon
Renders fat as it cooks, adding moisture and savoury flavour to the lean rabbit.
Butter
Adds fat and richness when cooking the trail and livers.
Toast or fried bread
Provides a crisp base that holds the liver mixture and the rabbit.

The step that matters

Cook the rabbit with bacon until done. Rabbit is very lean and dries out quickly once overcooked. Bacon fat helps baste the meat, but the timing must be watched closely so it stays moist and tender.

“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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