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
Boil the rabbit in water for 10 minutes, then drain and let it cool.
Cut the rabbit into joints.
Dip each joint into beaten egg, then coat with bread crumbs, seasoning with salt and pepper.
Fry and make the gravy
Heat butter and lard in a pan over moderate heat.
Fry the rabbit joints until brown on both sides.
Remove the rabbit and thicken the remaining gravy with flour.
Add milk or cream to the gravy and let it boil.
Serve
Pour the gravy over the fried rabbit and serve hot, garnished with sliced lemon.
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.
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Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together27,047 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together27,232 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together11,466 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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 meat that is cooked into tender joints and browned in fat.
- Eggs
- Bind the bread crumb coating so it adheres to the rabbit joints.
- Bread crumbs
- Form a crisp, golden-brown crust when fried.
- Flour
- Thickens the pan juices into a smooth gravy.
- Milk or cream
- Adds richness and body to the gravy.
The step that matters
Frying the coated joints until brown on both sides. Moderate heat lets the bread crumb coating brown and crisp while the meat cooks through. Too high a heat scorches the crumbs before the inside is cooked, and too low a heat leaves the coating greasy and pale.
“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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