Skip to main content
Main

Smothered Rabbit

A rabbit cooked with onions, milk, water, butter, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Smothered Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Clean the rabbit, wash it, and cut it open to lay flat.

  2. Broil the rabbit slowly until it is a fine brown on both sides.

  3. Season the rabbit with salt and pepper, and baste it with butter.

Make the onion smother

  1. Pare the onions and boil them in milk and water until soft.

  2. Drain and mash the onions, then season with salt, pepper, and add butter.

Assemble and serve

  1. Cover the rabbit entirely with the mashed onions and serve hot.

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

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

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

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

  3. Rabbit + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,292 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Rabbit + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,448 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit
Forms the main body of the dish and browns under the broiler for flavour.
Onions
Soften when boiled and mash into a smooth covering that adds sweetness and moisture.
Milk
Cooks with the onions to make them tender and creamy when mashed.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the rabbit brown while basting.

The step that matters

Broil the rabbit slowly until fine brown on both sides. Slow broiling cooks the lean meat through while browning the surface gradually, so it stays moist instead of drying or scorching before the centre is done.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, milk, pepper, butter):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, milk, pepper, butter. 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.

You might also like

Rabbit PattiesRabbit Patties6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes