We were invited to conceive a recipe for Horror Caviar, A24’s limited-edition cookbook—an exercise in atmosphere as much as appetite. Our point of departure was the cult classic Pet Sematary, a film where tenderness and dread exist in balance.

We found the answer obvious: a reinterpretation of Beggar’s Duck made with rabbit. Skinned, the animal bears an uncanny resemblance to a cat—a visual tension that feels both poetic and unsettling, much like the film itself.

The legend of Beggar’s Duck describes beggars without a pot who encased a duck in clay and baked it whole. The hardened shell became the vessel; the dish was accessed by breaking it open.

In our version the rabbit is wrapped, not just in clay, but within a sculpted cat form—an object both totemic and faintly perverse. To serve, the clay cat smashed open with a Tonka truck.

The result is part recipe, part object, and part ritual: an intentional collision of craft, play, and unease.