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Roast Rabbit

A rabbit stuffed with a mixture of heart, liver, pork fat, bread crumbs, and seasoned, then roasted and served with a butter and lemon gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Roast Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Clean and wash the rabbit.

  2. Soak the rabbit in slightly salted water for 1.5 hours, changing the water once.

  3. Have the butcher skin the rabbit.

  4. Parboil the heart and liver.

  5. Chop the heart and liver finely.

  6. Mix the chopped heart and liver with minced fat pork.

  7. Make a stuffing with bread crumbs, seasoned and moist, using the giblet boiling water.

  8. Stuff the rabbit with the mixture.

  9. Sew the rabbit up.

  10. Rub the rabbit with butter.

Roast and baste

  1. Roast the rabbit.

  2. Baste the rabbit with butter and water until the gravy flows freely.

  3. Baste the rabbit with the drippings.

  4. Dredge the rabbit with flour a few minutes before removing from the oven.

  5. Froth the rabbit with butter.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Place the rabbit in a hot dish.

  2. Add lemon juice, minced onion, and butter to the gravy.

  3. Thicken the gravy with browned flour.

  4. Bring the gravy to a boil.

  5. Serve the gravy in a tureen or boat.

  6. Garnish the rabbit with sliced lemon and a dot of currant jelly in the center of each slice.

  7. Cut off the head before serving.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Liver + porktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,606 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).

  4. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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
Is the main cooked meat, and its soaking and basting shape the final texture and moisture.
Heart and liver
Add rich flavor to the stuffing and moisten the filling as they cook.
Fat pork
Adds fat to the stuffing, keeping it moist and flavorful during roasting.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the giblet water and butter to form a moist, tender stuffing.
Butter
Adds fat for browning and richness when rubbed on and basted over the rabbit.
Flour
Dredged on the rabbit and browned to thicken the gravy.

The step that matters

Basting the rabbit until the gravy flows freely. Regular basting with butter and drippings keeps the surface moist and promotes even browning, while the flour dredge near the end helps form a crust and thicken the pan juices. Basting too little can leave the lean meat dry.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, liver, pork, bread, butter, flour, onion):

  1. Applefits better
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Avocadofits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, liver, pork, bread, butter, flour, onion. 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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