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Rabbit Boiled

A boiled rabbit with onion, carrot, turnip, seasoned with salt and pepper, served with parsley or onion sauce and boiled bacon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Rabbit Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Cook

  1. Place the rabbit joints in boiling water.

  2. Add the sliced onion, carrot, turnip, salt, and pepper.

  3. Cook gently for 2 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve on a hot dish with parsley or onion sauce and boiled 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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit
Lean meat that becomes tender as slow simmering softens its connective tissue.
Onion
Adds savoury aroma and depth to the cooking liquid as it simmers.
Carrot
Adds gentle sweetness and aroma to the cooking liquid.
Turnip
Adds mild sweetness and earthy flavour to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Cook gently for 2 hours. Once the water is boiling, keep it at a gentle simmer. Hard boiling toughens the meat's proteins and can break the rabbit joints apart, while slow simmering lets the connective tissue soften gradually.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, carrot, turnip, pepper, parsley. 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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