Skip to main content
Main

Smothered Rabbit

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Smothered Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Clean the rabbit and wash it thoroughly.

  2. Season the rabbit well with salt and pepper.

Broil and smother

  1. Lay the rabbit flat on a grill and broil it slowly until it is a fine brown.

  2. Boil and mash the onions with a piece of butter, some pepper, and salt.

  3. Baste the rabbit with butter and pour the mashed onions over it to cover completely.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately.

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. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Rabbit + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,334 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-pentylpyridine (fat).

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit
The main protein, which browns under the grill and forms the base of the dish.
Onions
Boiled and mashed, they form a soft smothering layer that adds sweetness and moisture.
Butter
Fat that carries flavor and helps the rabbit brown while keeping its surface moist when basted.

The step that matters

Broil slowly and baste with butter. Rabbit is very lean and dries out quickly under direct heat. Slow broiling with butter basting adds fat that keeps the surface moist while it browns evenly.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, 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