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Fricassee Rabbit

A stew of rabbit joints simmered with herbs, onion, spices, salt pork, and finished with cream, eggs, butter, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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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. Soak the rabbit joints in salt and water for 30 minutes.

  2. Place the rabbits in a saucepan with cold water, sweet herbs, minced onion, mace, nutmeg, pepper, and salt pork.

  3. Cover and stew until tender.

Make the sauce

  1. Remove the rabbits and keep them warm in a dish.

  2. Add cream, beaten eggs (stirred in gradually), butter, and a thickening made of flour and a little milk to the gravy.

  3. Boil the gravy once, then remove it from heat and stir in lemon juice.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over 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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Rabbit + porktop 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

Rabbit
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through slow, moist stewing.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savoury flavour that enriches the stewing liquid and gravy.
Eggs
Thicken the cream sauce gently when stirred in gradually and kept below boiling.
Cream
Adds richness and body, softening the gravy's texture.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the rabbit pieces.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, creamy sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs to the gravy. Eggs curdle if they get too hot or are added all at once. Stirring them in gradually and not letting the sauce boil after they go in keeps it smooth and thickened.

Swap the mace

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

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

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

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