Name: Boiled Rabbit
Ingredients: 1 rabbit; hot water; plain white sauce or celery sauce or parsley and butter

Why it works: Rabbit and sauce work together. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 330 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Boiled Rabbit

Ingredients

1 rabbit
hot water
plain white sauce or celery sauce or parsley and butter

Directions

Prepare

Wash the rabbit thoroughly.
Place the rabbit in enough hot water to cover it.

Cook and serve

Boil until tender, about 30 to 45 minutes.
Serve with plain white sauce, celery sauce, or parsley and butter as alternatives to onion.

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.

Rabbit + saucetop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together330 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit: Is the main protein that becomes tender through long simmering in water.
Plain white sauce: Adds a smooth, creamy coating that complements the mild meat when served.

“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.