Skip to main content
Main

Fricassee Rabbit

A stew of rabbit in a cream sauce flavored with onion, mace, nutmeg, pepper, salt pork, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Fricassee Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Combine onion, mace, nutmeg, pepper, and salt pork in a pot.

  2. Cover and stew until tender.

Make the gravy

  1. Remove the rabbits from the pot and place them in a warm dish.

  2. Add cream, beaten eggs, butter, and a thickening made from flour and a little milk to the gravy.

  3. Bring the gravy to a boil.

  4. Remove from heat and stir in lemon juice.

  5. Pour the sauce over the rabbits.

  6. Do not cook the head or neck.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Pork + rabbittop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together832 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Onion + porktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Beaten eggs enrich and thicken the cream sauce as they set with gentle heat.
Flour
Forms a thickening with the liquid that gives the gravy body.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the gravy.
Salt pork
Renders fat and savoury flavour into the pot as the rabbit stews.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, creamy gravy.

The step that matters

Adding the lemon juice off the heat. Beaten eggs in the sauce can curdle or scramble if they are boiled or overheated, so the lemon juice is stirred in after the gravy is removed from the heat.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, nutmeg, pepper, pork, rabbit, cream, egg):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, nutmeg, pepper, pork, rabbit, cream, egg. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesRabbit PattiesRabbit Patties6 recipes