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Rabbits Smothered in Onions

A rabbit dish smothered in mashed onions and cream, served with bacon, parsley, carrots, and turnips.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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

Make the onion sauce

  1. Mash the onions in a basin with a wooden spoon, seasoning with pepper and adding cream or milk.

  2. Rinse the bottom of a saucepan with broth to prevent burning.

  3. Add the mashed onions to the saucepan and heat thoroughly.

Serve

  1. Dish the boiled rabbits and pour the mashed onions over them.

  2. Serve the bacon on a separate dish.

  3. Garnish the bacon with parsley.

  4. Arrange the carrots and turnips around the bacon.

  5. Carve the rabbit by cutting off the legs and wings.

  6. Divide the rabbit 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.

  1. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Parsley + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. 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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Mashed into a smooth base that thickens and sweetens the sauce as it heats.
Cream or milk
Adds moisture and richness to the mashed onions, softening their texture.
Bacon
Adds savoury fat and salty flavour to the dish.

The step that matters

Rinse the bottom of a saucepan with broth. Onion purée is thick and sugary, so it scorches easily on the pan base. A thin layer of broth on the bottom creates a barrier that prevents sticking and burning while the mixture heats.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, cream, pepper, parsley, carrot, turnip. 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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