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Rabbit Served Cold

Rabbit simmered in milk and water with onions, parsley, pepper, and salt, coated in a thick white sauce, served cold on lettuce with tomato.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Rabbit Served Cold

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Wash the rabbit and cut it into neat joints.

  2. Place the rabbit in a stewpan and cover with milk and water.

  3. Add the sliced onions, parsley, pepper, and salt.

  4. Simmer gently for 2 hours or until the rabbit is tender.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Strain the cooking liquid and use it to make a thick white sauce.

  2. Coat each joint of rabbit with the sauce.

  3. Arrange the coated rabbit on a bed of cut lettuce and garnish with tomato.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,483 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Lettuce + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,655 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  5. Onion + lettucetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender through slow simmering.
Milk
Gives the cooking liquid richness and body, and forms the base of the white sauce.
Onions
Add aromatic sweetness and flavour to the cooking liquid that is later used in the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for 2 hours. Gentle, low heat keeps the milk from scorching and boiling over, and lets the connective tissue in the rabbit break down slowly so the meat becomes tender rather than tough and dry.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, milk, parsley, pepper, lettuce, tomato):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, milk, parsley, pepper, lettuce, tomato. 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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