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To Boil Rabbits

A dish of rabbits boiled quickly, served with a creamy onion sauce.

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

  1. Truss the rabbits for boiling.

  2. Boil the rabbits quickly until they are white.

  3. Place the rabbits in a dish.

Make the onion sauce

  1. Peel and boil enough onions to cover the rabbits until tender.

  2. Strain the onions, squeeze them dry, and chop them finely.

  3. In a saucepan, combine the chopped onions with butter, cream, salt, and a little flour. Stir over gentle heat until the butter melts.

  4. Pour the onion 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. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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
Form the main body of the dish, cooked by boiling until white.
Onions
Boiled until tender, then chopped to form the body of the sauce.
Butter
Melts into the onions to give the sauce richness and a smooth texture.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy body to the onion sauce.
Flour
Thickens the onion sauce so it coats the rabbits.

The step that matters

Boil the rabbits quickly until they are white. Boiling quickly keeps the meat tender and light in colour; a slow or prolonged boil can toughen the meat and dull its appearance.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

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