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Rabbits Roasted with Brown Onion Sauce

A roasted rabbit served with a brown onion sauce made from espagnole and plain sauce, butter, onions, peppercorns, sea salt, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Rabbit and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,292 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Rabbits Roasted with Brown Onion Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbits

  1. Roast the rabbits.

  2. Stuff the rabbits well.

Make the onion sauce

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

  2. Add the sliced onions, peppercorns, and salt.

  3. Stir until the onions are browned.

  4. Pour in the espagnole sauce.

  5. Reduce the sauce.

  6. Add the plain sauce.

  7. Bring the sauce to a boil.

  8. Rub the sauce through a fine sieve.

Serve

  1. Place the rabbits on a serving dish with their heads arranged around.

  2. Heat the sauce.

  3. Squeeze in the lemon juice.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Rabbit + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together626 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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
Provide the main meat, which cooks through during roasting and is the centrepiece of the dish.
Onions
Browning and caramelising build deep, sweet flavour that gives the sauce its character.
Butter
Fat that carries the onions' browning and adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the sauce.
Espagnole sauce
Brown sauce base that gives the sauce body and a savoury, roasted depth.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, heavy sauce and balances its flavour.

The step that matters

Rub the sauce through a fine sieve. Pushing the sauce through a fine sieve removes onion fibres and any solids, so the sauce turns smooth and silky rather than grainy or stringy.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Mangofits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, onion, butter, sauce. 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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