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Larded Rabbit Baked with Milk

A rabbit larded with pork fat, baked in milk and served with a butter‑flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Rabbit and pork 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 ↓

Larded Rabbit Baked with Milk

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Cut off the rabbit's head at the shoulder bones.

  2. Remove rib bones and as much skin as possible.

  3. Cut off the feet and scrape visible tendons, discarding them.

  4. Wash the rabbit in several waters and wipe dry.

  5. Lard the upper surface with pork lardoons or spread thin slices of larding pork over it.

Roast the rabbit

  1. Place the rabbit in a hot oven.

  2. Baste the rabbit with the fat in the pan.

  3. Lower the heat.

  4. Baste the rabbit with hot milk.

  5. Dredge the rabbit with flour after each basting.

  6. Cook the rabbit for 1 to 1.5 hours until tender.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Melt ¼ cup of butter and cook it with ¼ cup of flour, salt, and paprika.

  2. Add ¼ cup of cold milk.

  3. Add the milk drained from the baking pan.

  4. Serve the rabbit on a hot dish with rice croquettes.

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. Rabbit + porktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together832 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pork + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,386 recipes

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

  5. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

Flour and butter 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 protein, becoming tender and moist as it cooks slowly with basting.
Pork lardoons or larding pork
Adds fat that bastes the lean rabbit meat and keeps it moist during roasting.
Hot milk
Basting liquid that moistens the surface and helps build browning and flavor in the pan.
Flour
Dredged onto the rabbit to form a coating that helps brown and thicken the pan juices.
Butter
Fat that is cooked with flour to form a roux for the sauce.
Milk
Liquid that combines with the butter and flour roux to make a smooth sauce.

The step that matters

Cook the rabbit for 1 to 1.5 hours until tender. Rabbit is very lean, so cooking it too briefly leaves it tough, while overcooking dries it out. Slow roasting with regular basting keeps the meat moist as connective tissue softens.

“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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