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Rabbit and Onions

A simple rabbit stew cooked with onions, butter, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Rabbit and Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean and prepare the rabbit, cutting it into pieces.

Cook

  1. Melt the butter in a pan over medium heat.

  2. Add the rabbit pieces and brown them on all sides.

  3. Chop the onions and add them to the pan.

  4. Season with salt and pepper, then cover and cook until the rabbit is tender.

  5. 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.

  1. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Rabbit + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,448 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Rabbit + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,334 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-pentylpyridine (fat).

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through slow covered cooking.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they soften in the butter and pan juices.
Butter
Adds fat for browning the rabbit and carries flavor through the pan.

The step that matters

Brown the rabbit on all sides. Browning creates flavorful caramelized surfaces through the Maillard reaction. Crowding the pan or moving the pieces too early steams the meat instead, leaving it pale and less flavorful.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Mustardfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

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