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Larded Rabbit

A rabbit joint dish larded with pork fat, stewed in veal or beef gravy with herbs and onion.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Larded Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Remove the head and cut the rabbit into joints.

  2. Lard the rabbit with slips of fat pork.

  3. Fry in a hot frying pan until half done.

Stew

  1. In a saucepan, combine the rabbit, strained gravy, sweet herbs, minced onion, and pepper.

  2. Stew covered for 30 minutes or until tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the rabbit and place in a hot covered dish.

  2. Strain the gravy, add butter, lemon juice, and thicken with flour.

  3. Boil the gravy and pour over the rabbit.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  4. Pork + vealtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,930 recipes

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through slow covered stewing.
Fat pork
Adds richness and moisture, since lean rabbit can dry out during cooking.
Strained gravy
Forms the cooking liquid and carries flavour into the meat as it stews.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it clings to the rabbit when poured over.
Butter
Adds fat and a smooth, rounded richness to the finished gravy.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich gravy and balances its fat.

The step that matters

Stew covered for 30 minutes or until tender. Covered, gentle stewing breaks down rabbit's connective tissue slowly. Boiling hard or uncovered can toughen the meat and reduce the gravy too quickly.

“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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