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Fricaseed Rabbits

Rabbits simmered in a sauce of consomme, cream, and mushrooms.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Fricaseed Rabbits

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbits

  1. Cut the rabbits into pieces and blanch them in boiling water for 1 minute.

Make the sauce

  1. In a stewpan, heat the butter and sauté the mushroom trimmings until they begin to fry.

  2. Stir in the flour, then gradually mix in the consomme and bring to a boil.

  3. Add the rabbits to the boiling consomme and let them cook gently until done.

  4. Transfer the rabbits to another stewpan and reduce the sauce until thick.

  5. Mix in the boiling cream until the sauce reaches the thickness of béchamel.

Finish and serve

  1. Pass the sauce through a fine sieve over the rabbits, heat it up, and add the egg yolk and a few mushrooms.

  2. 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. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Rabbit + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender as it cooks gently in the consomme.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps the mushroom trimmings brown lightly.
Flour
Thickens the consomme into a sauce as it heats.
Consomme
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and carries its savoury flavour.
Cream
Adds richness and body, thickening the sauce toward a béchamel consistency.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the finished sauce, giving it a smooth, velvety texture.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk. Egg yolk thickens when heated but can scramble if the sauce boils after it is added. Keep the sauce hot but below a simmer once the yolk goes in.

“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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