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To Roast a Rabbit

A rabbit trussed and stuffed with forcemeat, lined with bacon, roasted and basted with butter, served with brown gravy and optional currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

To Roast a Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Remove the backbone from the rabbit carefully.

  2. Line the inside of the rabbit with thin slices of bacon.

  3. Fill the rabbit with forcemeat and sew it up.

  4. Truss the rabbit and roast it at a clear, brisk fire.

Roast and serve

  1. Baste the rabbit constantly with butter.

  2. Flour the rabbit well soon after it is laid down.

  3. Serve with good brown gravy and currant jelly if desired.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  3. Rabbit + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,448 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Flour + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,077 recipes

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
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking into tender meat when roasted whole.
Bacon
Lines the inside, adding fat and savoury flavour that keeps the lean meat moist.
Forcemeat
Stuffing that adds richness and moisture to the inside of the rabbit as it roasts.
Butter
Basting fat that promotes even browning and a glossy, tender surface.
Flour
Dusted over the rabbit to help form a crisp, golden crust during roasting.

The step that matters

Flour the rabbit well soon after it is laid down. Flour applied too late will not adhere well or brown evenly. Applied soon after the rabbit goes to the fire, it sets into a crust that protects the meat and browns it golden.

Swap the currant

The recipe marks currant as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, butter, flour):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, butter, 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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