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To Boil Rabbits

A dish of rabbits boiled quickly and served with a butter, onion, cream, and flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

To Boil Rabbits

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Truss the rabbits for boiling.

  2. Boil them quickly until white.

Make the onion sauce

  1. Peel the onions.

  2. Boil enough onions to cover the rabbits until tender.

  3. Strain the onions.

  4. Squeeze out excess water.

  5. Chop them finely.

  6. In a saucepan, melt a piece of butter.

  7. Add the chopped onions.

  8. Add the cream.

  9. Add the salt.

  10. Add a little flour.

  11. Stir over gentle heat until the butter is melted.

  12. Pour the sauce over the rabbits.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Rabbit + creamtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together409 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Rabbit + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Rabbits
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through boiling.
Onions
Soften into a sweet, mild base that gives the sauce its body and flavour.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour into the sauce.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, creamy texture.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it heats with the butter and liquids.

The step that matters

Add a little flour. Flour must be cooked with the melted butter and stirred over gentle heat so it thickens smoothly; added to hot liquid without stirring it can form lumps.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

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