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Fricasseed Rabbit

A stew of rabbit seasoned with cayenne, salt, mace, thickened with butter and flour, finished with Madeira wine or cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fricasseed Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Season the cut-up rabbits with cayenne pepper, coarse sea salt, and mace in a stew-pan with a tightly-fitting cover.

  2. Add hot water and stew until the rabbits become tender.

  3. Mix the butter with flour to create a paste, then add it to the stew to thicken the gravy.

  4. Just before serving, pour in the Madeira wine or cream.

  5. Serve immediately.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  3. Rabbit + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,448 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Rabbit + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,334 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-pentylpyridine (fat).

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
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through slow stewing in liquid.
Butter and flour
Form a paste that thickens the gravy as it stews.
Madeira wine or cream
Adds richness and a mellow sweetness to the finished gravy.

The step that matters

Stewing the rabbit until tender. Rabbit is lean and can turn dry or tough if cooked too hard or too fast. A gentle, covered simmer in liquid breaks down connective tissue slowly, keeping the meat moist and tender.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, pepper, butter, flour, madeira wine):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, pepper, butter, flour, madeira wine. 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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