Name: Rabbits
Ingredients: 2 full grown rabbits or 3 small rabbits; 3 medium onions, fried; 7 pints water; 1 large teaspoon salt (or more to taste); 4 carrots; 1 bunch parsley; 1 small teaspoon peppercorns

Why it works: Carrot and parsley 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Fry the onions until golden.

Simmer the stew

In a large pot, combine the water, fried onions, salt, carrots, parsley, and peppercorns.
Add the rabbits to the pot.
Simmer for 5 to 5½ hours until the rabbits are tender.

Serve

Serve hot.

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.

Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,053 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together21,601 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together25,843 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Rabbit + oniontop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,292 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Rabbit + parsleytop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together602 recipes

Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbits: Provide the main protein; slow simmering over hours makes the meat tender and pull away from the bone.
Onions: Frying them to golden adds sweetness and savory depth to the broth.
Carrots: Add natural sweetness and body to the stew as they soften during simmering.

The step that matters

Simmer for 5 to 5½ hours until the rabbits are tender. A long, gentle simmer breaks down connective tissue in the meat, so it becomes tender. Cooking too briskly can toughen the meat and leave the broth cloudy, so keep the liquid at a low, steady simmer and check tenderness before serving.