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Boiled Rabbit

A rabbit boiled with milk, water, parsley, carrot, onion, mace, peppercorns, and salt, served with celery sauce and fried bacon garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and carrot 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the rabbit in milk and water for 2 hours.

  2. Truss the rabbit carefully to maintain its shape.

Boil and serve

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

  2. Add parsley, carrot, onion, mace, peppercorns, and salt.

  3. Cook for 45 minutes.

  4. Serve with celery sauce and garnish with fried bacon strips and parsley.

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 + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  5. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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; long gentle boiling makes the meat tender and moist.
Milk
Soaking in milk and water helps mellow the meat's flavor and keep it moist.

The step that matters

Boil the rabbit in enough water to cover it. The rabbit must stay fully submerged so it cooks evenly. Simmering gently rather than hard boiling keeps the meat tender and prevents it from toughening or falling apart.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, milk, parsley, carrot, onion, celery, 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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