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Boiled Rabbit

A boiled rabbit served with onion sauce and bacon or salt pork.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Rabbit and pork work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 832 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Boiled Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Skin and clean the rabbit, then truss it.

  2. Soak the rabbit in warm water for 2 hours, changing the water frequently.

Boil

  1. Place the rabbit in a saucepan of boiling water with a lump of stale breadcrumbs.

  2. Boil for 30 to 45 minutes.

Serve

  1. Remove the rabbit, take out the skewers, and place it on a dish.

  2. Cover with thick onion sauce and serve with bacon or salt pork.

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 + porktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together832 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Onion + porktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. 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

Rabbit
Is the main protein; long gentle boiling makes the meat tender and moist.
Stale breadcrumbs
Added to the boiling water, they help thicken and lightly season the cooking liquid.
Thick onion sauce
Adds moisture and richness, coating the mild boiled meat with sweetness and body.
Bacon or salt pork
Adds salty, savoury fat that contrasts with the lean, mild rabbit.

The step that matters

Boil for 30 to 45 minutes. Boiling at a steady simmer cooks the rabbit through and softens its connective tissue. Too hard a boil can toughen and dry the meat, so keep the water gently bubbling.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, sauce, pork. 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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