Name: Rabbits Smothered in Onions
Ingredients: 2 boiled rabbits; 2 onions; ¼ teaspoon pepper; 2 tablespoons cream or milk; 1 dessertspoon broth; bacon; parsley; carrots; turnips

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 ↓

Rabbits Smothered in Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Mash the boiled onions in a basin until smooth. Season with pepper and add cream or milk.
Rinse the bottom of a saucepan with broth to prevent burning. Add the mashed onions and heat thoroughly.
Dish the boiled rabbits and pour the mashed onions over them.
Serve the bacon on a separate dish, garnished with parsley, and arrange the carrots and turnips around it.
Carve the rabbit by cutting off the legs and wings, then divide it into portions across the back and loins.

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.

Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,053 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Parsley + turniptop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,842 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,585 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Swap the onion

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

Parsnipfits better
Leekfits better
Spinachfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, pepper, cream, parsley, carrot, turnip. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.