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Boiled Rabbit and Bacon

A boiled rabbit seasoned with carrot, onion, parsley, mace, peppercorns, and salt, served with fried bacon strips.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Boiled Rabbit and Bacon

Oven, in the book's wordsA sharp oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the rabbit thoroughly.

  2. Soak the rabbit in a mixture of milk and water for 2 hours.

  3. Truss the rabbit with wooden skewers and string to secure its shape.

Boil

  1. Boil the rabbit in enough water to cover it.

  2. Add carrot, onion, parsley, mace, peppercorns, and salt to the pot.

  3. Cook for 45 minutes to 1 hour until the rabbit is tender.

Serve

  1. Serve the rabbit with onion or celery sauce and garnish with fried bacon strips.

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 + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Carrot + macetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit
Main protein; slow cooking softens its connective tissue until the meat becomes tender.
Milk (in the method)
Soaking in milk and water mellows the meat's gamey flavour and keeps it mild.
Carrot
Adds subtle sweetness and aromatic depth to the cooking liquid.
Onion
Adds savoury aroma and sweetness to the cooking liquid and the sauce.
Parsley
Contributes fresh, herbal aroma to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Boil the rabbit in enough water to cover it. Vigorous boiling toughens muscle fibres and dries the meat. A gentle simmer, with the rabbit fully covered, lets connective tissue soften slowly so the meat stays moist and tender.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, carrot, onion, 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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