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Rabbit, Smothered with Onions

A rabbit cooked with onions and served in a pureed onion sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Rabbit, Smothered with Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Truss the rabbit firmly and dry it well.

  2. In a saucepan, bring 3 quarts of water to a boil and add the rabbit.

  3. Simmer gently until the rabbit and onions are cooked through.

Make the onion sauce

  1. Remove the onions, mince them, and place in a clean saucepan.

  2. Add butter, flour, milk, and white pepper to the minced onions. Mix thoroughly over gentle heat to form a puree.

Serve

  1. Place the rabbit on a hot dish, remove the skewers, and pour the onion puree over it. Serve very 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Rabbit + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 cooks through during gentle simmering.
Large onions
Break down into a puree that thickens and sweetens the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded flavour to the onion puree.
Flour
Thickens the onion puree so it clings to the rabbit.

The step that matters

Mixing the onion puree over gentle heat. Flour thickens best when it is evenly mixed into the onions and heated gently; high heat can scorch the butter and onions or leave the sauce lumpy.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, onion, butter, flour, 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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