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Roast Rabbit

A rabbit stuffed with veal, pork, crackers, and seasonings, then baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and rabbit work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 832 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Roast Rabbit

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the stuffing

  1. Simmer veal and pork in water to cover for 2 hours.

  2. Chop the meat fine and mix with rolled crackers, salt, pepper, summer savory, butter, and broth.

Stuff and shape the rabbit

  1. Stuff the hot mixture into the rabbit and sew up the opening.

  2. Position the rabbit on its knees and skewer it.

Roast and baste

  1. Rub the rabbit thickly with butter, dredge with flour, and place in a baking pan with hot water at the bottom.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C), basting frequently.

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. Pork + rabbittop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together832 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Summer savory + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together263 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + summer savorytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together671 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Veal + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,930 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  5. Pork + meattop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,208 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Provides the main meaty body of the stuffing, becoming tender through long simmering.
Pork
Adds fat to the stuffing, keeping it moist and rich as it cooks.
Crackers
Absorb the cooking broth and bind the chopped meat into a cohesive stuffing.
Broth
Moistens the stuffing so it stays juicy inside the rabbit during roasting.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and promotes browning on the rabbit's surface.
Flour
Dredged onto the rabbit to help form a browned, crisp outer crust.

The step that matters

Basting the rabbit frequently. Lean rabbit meat dries out easily in the oven. Regular basting with butter and pan juices keeps the surface moist and helps it brown evenly.

Swap the summer savory

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, pork, pepper, butter, meat, rabbit, flour):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Summer savorythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pork, pepper, butter, meat, rabbit, flour. 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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