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Rabbits, to Boil

A boiled rabbit served with a butter and parsley sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 25,843 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Rabbits, to Boil

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the rabbit

  1. Boil the rabbit gently for 30 minutes if moderate sized, or 40 minutes if large.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a separate pan, melt the butter and sauté the chopped onion until soft.

  2. Add the chopped parsley to the onion and mix well.

  3. Serve the boiled rabbit with the parsley and butter sauce.

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 + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

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

  5. Rabbit + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,448 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 slow, gentle cooking.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, moist texture.
Onion
Softens and turns sweet and aromatic when sautéed in butter.
Parsley
Adds a fresh, green aroma that lightens the rich butter sauce.

The step that matters

Boil the rabbit gently. A gentle simmer cooks the meat evenly and keeps it tender. A hard rolling boil toughens the muscle fibres and can break the meat apart.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, butter, onion. 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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