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Rabbits and Onions

A stew of rabbits simmered with onions, butter, flour, cream, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Rabbits and Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbits

  1. Skewer the rabbits to resemble chicken and soak them in water for 1 hour.

  2. Boil the rabbits for about 20 minutes.

Make the onion sauce

  1. Peel and slice the onions, then boil them for at least 1 hour.

  2. Strain the onions and squeeze out excess water.

  3. Rub the onions through a tammy into a stew-pan.

  4. Add butter, flour, cream, and salt to the onions in the stew-pan.

  5. Stir the mixture over heat until it boils, then set aside until needed.

  6. Ensure the sauce is thick enough to coat the rabbits.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Rabbit + creamtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together409 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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

Rabbits
Provide the main meat of the stew, which is cooked through by boiling.
Portugal onions
Are boiled, then pressed through a tammy to form the body of the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded flavour to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it can coat the rabbits.
Cream
Adds richness and smoothness, softening the sauce's texture.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce. Flour needs to be heated while stirring until the mixture boils so it swells and thickens the sauce. If it stays too thin, it will not coat the rabbits and will run off the meat.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, butter, flour, cream. 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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