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Rabbit with Onions

A rabbit simmered in water, then fried with onions and a flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Rabbit and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,292 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Rabbit with Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Clean the rabbit and place it in a pot with enough cold water to cover it.

  2. Boil until tender, then remove, joint, and fry in lard until light brown.

  3. Set the rabbit aside to keep warm.

Make the onion sauce

  1. In the same lard, fry the sliced onions until done.

  2. Add a little water and the flour to the onions, and let it simmer for a minute.

Serve

  1. Pour the onion mixture over the rabbit.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  3. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 becomes tender through boiling and then browns in the lard.
Onions
Add sweetness and savory body as they cook down in the lard.
Flour
Thickens the onion liquid into a light sauce as it simmers.
Lard
Conducts heat for frying and adds richness and browning to the rabbit and onions.

The step that matters

Boiling the rabbit until tender. Rabbit is lean and can turn dry or tough if not cooked fully before frying. Boiling first softens the muscle fibers so the rabbit becomes tender, and the frying afterward adds color and flavor.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, flour. 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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