Name: Rabbits Boiled with Onion Sauce
Ingredients: 2 rabbits; ½ teaspoon coarse sea salt; 6 onions; 2 tablespoons butter; ½ cup consommé; 3 tablespoons plain sauce; ½ pint cream; pepper to taste

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Rabbits Boiled with Onion Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the rabbits and onions

Boil the rabbits gently in water with salt until cooked through.
Peel and halve the onions while the rabbits are boiling.
Boil the onions until tender while the rabbits are boiling.
Drain the onions.
Chop the onions.

Make the onion sauce

Place the onions in a saucepan with butter.
When the butter starts to fry, add the consommé and reduce it.
Stir in the plain sauce.
Add the cream, seasoning with pepper and salt.
Heat the sauce until very hot.

Serve

Cut the heads off the rabbits.
Split the rabbits in two.
Arrange the rabbits on a serving dish.
Pour the onion sauce over the rabbits before serving.

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.

Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,787 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Rabbit + creamtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together409 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).
Rabbit + oniontop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,292 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 is cooked through by gentle boiling.
Onions: Soften and sweeten, and form the body of the sauce once chopped and cooked down.
Butter: Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour as the onions cook in it.
Consommé: Adds savoury liquid that reduces to concentrate the flavour of the sauce.
Cream: Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Reducing the consommé with the butter and onions. If the consommé is not reduced enough, the sauce stays thin and watery; if it is over-reduced, it becomes overly salty and intense. Watching the liquid as it thickens keeps the sauce balanced before the cream is added.

Swap the onion

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

Mustardfits about as well
Potatofits about as well
Capsicumfits about as well
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, butter, sauce, cream, pepper. 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.