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Rabbits Smothered in Onions

Rabbits smothered in onions with a creamy onion sauce, 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 boiled onions in a basin until smooth.

  2. Season the mashed onions with pepper.

  3. Add cream or milk to the mashed onions.

  4. Rinse a saucepan with broth to prevent burning.

  5. Add the mashed onions to the saucepan.

  6. Heat the onions thoroughly.

Plate and serve

  1. Dish the boiled rabbits.

  2. Pour the mashed onions over the rabbits.

  3. Serve the bacon on a separate dish.

  4. Garnish the bacon with parsley.

  5. Arrange the carrots and turnips around the bacon.

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

  7. 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 and heated, they form the smooth sauce that coats the rabbit and adds sweetness.
Cream or milk
Adds moisture and richness, giving the mashed onions a smoother, softer texture.
Rabbits
The main protein, cooked first and then served under the onion sauce.

The step that matters

Heat the onions thoroughly. Mashed onions with cream or milk can scorch on the bottom of a pan. Rinsing the saucepan with broth first creates a thin protective layer, and gentle, steady heat keeps the sauce from burning while it warms through.

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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