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To Boil Rabbits Whole

Whole rabbits are boiled in onion sauce with coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Rabbit and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,292 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

To Boil Rabbits Whole

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the rabbits well and soak them in warm salt water for 30 minutes.

  2. Truss the rabbits by cutting the sinews under the back legs and bringing them flat to the side, fastening with a skewer.

  3. Bring the head around to the left side and secure it with a skewer through the right foreleg and body.

  4. Tie a piece of string around the skewers under the rabbit to maintain its shape while cooking.

Cook and serve

  1. Place the rabbits in boiling water and boil slowly for 1 hour.

  2. When serving, position the heads of the rabbits in opposite directions and cover with onion 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. Rabbit + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,292 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Rabbit + saucetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together330 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Onion + saucetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Onion and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,474 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
Provides the main meat, which stays tender and moist when simmered gently.
Onion sauce
Coats the cooked rabbit, adding moisture and savoury onion flavour.

The step that matters

Boil slowly for 1 hour. A rapid, rolling boil toughens the meat and can break the rabbits apart. A gentle simmer cooks the proteins evenly, keeping the meat tender and the bodies intact.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Welsh onionfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, sauce. 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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