Skip to main content
Main

Rabbit, Roast

A roasted rabbit cooked with butter, bacon, lime juice, and a sauce of pepper, salt, flour, and hot water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and lime match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,491 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Rabbit, Roast

Oven, in the book's wordsA good oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare

  1. Prepare the rabbit as you would for hare.

  2. Stuff the rabbit and rub it with butter.

  3. Wrap the rabbit in greaseproof paper and place it in a baking tin with some good dripping.

Roast

  1. After 15 minutes, remove the paper and baste the rabbit well.

  2. Bake gently in a 350°F (175°C) oven.

  3. When nearly done, dust a little flour over the rabbit to brown it.

  4. If not serving pork, add a few rolled rashers of bacon.

  5. Once cooked, lift the rabbit onto a hot dish.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Pour off the fat, then add pepper, salt, flour, lime juice, and hot water to the pan.

  2. Thicken the sauce and pour it into a sauce boat.

  3. Serve with onion sauce.

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. Pepper + limetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,491 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lime + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,263 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Rabbit + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,292 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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
Is the main meat, cooked gently so it stays moist and tender.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the rabbit and helps the surface brown.
Flour
Dusted on the rabbit to brown it, then used to thicken the pan sauce.
Lime juice
Adds acidity that brightens the pan sauce.
Bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour to the roast when pork is not served.

The step that matters

Dusting flour over the rabbit near the end of cooking. Flour browns in the hot fat on the surface, but added too early it can scorch or burn before the meat is cooked. Adding it when nearly done gives colour while the sauce thickens from the pan juices.

Swap the lime

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

  1. Lemonfits about as well
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Limethe original
  4. Mangofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, butter, flour, pepper, onion, sauce. 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.

You might also like

Rabbit PattiesRabbit Patties6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes