Skip to main content
Main

To Boil Rabbits Whole

A dish of whole rabbits boiled with a breadcrumb stuffing and served with a sauce of onions, milk, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

To Boil Rabbits Whole

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the rabbits well in warm water.

  2. If stuffing, mix bread crumbs, suet, parsley, onion, pepper, and salt. Moisten the mixture with milk and egg, then sew it into the rabbits' bellies.

  3. Truss the rabbits as you would for roasting.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the rabbits slowly for 1 hour.

  2. For the sauce, boil onions, then mix with milk, melted butter, flour, pepper, and salt.

  3. Pour the sauce over the rabbits when serving, placing the heads in opposite directions.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  5. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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, which becomes tender through slow boiling.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and add body to the stuffing, keeping it soft rather than dense.
Suet
Adds fat to the stuffing, contributing moisture and richness as it melts.
Egg
Binds the stuffing together so it holds its shape inside the rabbits.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce, giving it a smooth, rounded flavour.
Flour
Thickens the sauce by swelling with liquid as it heats.

The step that matters

Boil the rabbits slowly for 1 hour. Boiling gently keeps the meat from toughening and falling apart. A rolling boil forces moisture out of the muscle fibres and breaks the rabbit up, so keep the liquid at a slow simmer.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, bread, parsley, pepper, milk, egg, butter):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, bread, parsley, pepper, milk, egg, butter. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes