Name: To Smother Rabbits in Onions or Other Vegetables
Ingredients: rabbits; onion sauce (made with cream or stock); celery; artichoke bottoms; scorzonera; Jerusalem artichokes; peas; French beans

Why it works: Artichoke and jerusalem artichoke share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 31 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

To Smother Rabbits in Onions or Other Vegetables

Ingredients

Directions

Cut the rabbits into proper pieces.
Stew the rabbit pieces gently in a braise or white batter; avoid boiling hard to prevent toughness.
Prepare a rich onion sauce using cream or stock.
Optionally, dress the dish with a ragout of celery, artichoke bottoms, scorzonera, Jerusalem artichokes, peas, or French beans.

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.

Artichoke + jerusalem artichoketop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together31 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Artichoke + beanstop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together154 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Celery + jerusalem artichoketop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together75 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Peas + beanstop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together949 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Jerusalem artichoke + beanstop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, onion, celery, artichoke, jerusalem artichoke, beans):

Lentilsfits better
Chestnutfits better
Chickpeafits better
Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, onion, celery, artichoke, jerusalem artichoke, beans. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.