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Rabbit, Boiled

A boiled rabbit cooked with onion, carrot, herbs, mace, peppercorns, and salt, served with sauce or bacon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and carrot are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 21,601 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Rabbit, Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbits

  1. Skin, draw, and wash the rabbits.

  2. Truss the rabbits with heads skewered to the sides.

  3. Soak the rabbits in a mixture of milk and water for 2 hours for better flavor and tenderness.

Boil and serve

  1. In a large pot, bring water to a boil and add onion, carrot, sweet herbs, mace, peppercorns, and salt.

  2. Drop the trussed rabbits into the boiling water.

  3. Simmer gently for 30 to 45 minutes, depending on the age and size of the rabbits.

  4. Drain the rabbits and serve with your choice of onion, liver, white, or mushroom sauce, or with parsley and butter.

  5. Serve boiled bacon alongside or garnish the dish with rashers of broiled bacon.

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. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Carrot + macetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Onion + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

  5. Rabbit + carrottop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together301 recipes

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbits
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender with gentle simmering.
Milk and water
Soaking in this mixture is said to improve flavor and tenderness of the rabbit.
Bacon
Adds savory, salty fat flavor when served alongside or as a garnish.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for 30 to 45 minutes. A gentle simmer cooks the rabbit through without toughening the muscle fibers, which a hard rolling boil tends to do. Timing depends on the age and size of the rabbits, so check doneness rather than relying only on the clock.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Celeryfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, onion, carrot, milk. 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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