Wenn der Hase im Pfeffer liegt - Pure Pepper

When the rabbit is in the pepper

When the problem lies, you somehow don't really understand what this cute little animal has to do with the fact that you obviously have a pretty big problem?

Where does the saying “the rabbit in the pepper” come from?

The matter was bizarre enough to keep me hooked. So I started researching. To get straight to the point: none of the venerable linguists can provide a really plausible explanation. This saying seems to be a bit too old for that. It has been around since the Middle Ages. A special meat dish that researchers believe the saying refers to dates back to this time: the so-called “hare pepper”. It is “the front part of the hare cooked in a spiced broth and blood: hasenpfeffer, lepus in jure nigro.” This is what the two famous storytellers wrote in their German dictionary of the Brothers Grimm from 1877. A Mr. Johann Christoph Adelung also explains in his Grammatical-Critical Dictionary of High German Dialect from 1793 that this bloody delicacy was later simply called “pepper”.

Aha, we're getting closer to the matter! So the rabbit is not lying uncomfortably on sharp peppercorns like a fakir, but rather he or his paws are softly bedded in a delicious pepper broth. Unfortunately, that still doesn't explain what this has to do with a problem. Is the pepper the problem because it was pretty hard to get back then and is now all gone? Or is the rabbit the problem because it's dead now? Or something completely different? What do the researchers say about that?

What's the catch?

The aforementioned Mr Adelung explains the meaning of the saying as follows: "that is the real reason for the evil, that is what it is, that is what is lacking." Hmm. What is bad about a rabbit dish? And what is it lacking? Unfortunately, our saying expert does not tell us that.
Mr. KFW Wander is a bit more specific in his German Proverbs Dictionary of 1867: "As the rabbit gets into the pepper, so it will be eaten. That is the difficulty, that is what matters." So, the non-living state of the rabbit is the problem? But why? Is an edible rabbit a worse rabbit? But that would at least provide completely new insights into our medieval contemporaries: So they already existed back then, vegetarians and animal rights activists!
The Berliner Fremdenblatt from 1866 finally offers an explanation that at first seems a bit far-fetched to me: "In some areas of northern Germany, the hare giblets are prepared with lots of spices and pepper, and all sorts of other ingredients are added, so that the actual giblets (as well as the chicken meat in the fricassée) are sometimes difficult to find. We assume that this is where the saying "There's a hare in the pepper" comes from, for certain knots that are difficult to find or solve."
So does that mean that a few pieces of rabbit hidden in the goulash are a symbol of an unsolvable problem? Now that is really more than ingenious! Thank you, Berliner Fremdenblatt! And please forgive me for almost wanting to send the linguists to where the pepper grows...