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White Fricassee of Rabbit

A white fricassee of rabbit with bacon, vegetables, and a creamy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley 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 ↓

White Fricassee of Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the rabbit in cold water for 2 hours.

  2. In a stew-pan, add bacon, carrot, onion, garlic, celery, parsley, bay leaf, laurel leaf, and thyme.

  3. Add the rabbit and top with more bacon.

Cook and finish

  1. Place the stew-pan by the fire for 1 hour.

  2. Make the sauce by boiling stock, sugar, salt, nutmeg, and baked flour.

  3. Add the rabbit and simmer for 20 minutes.

  4. Beat the egg yolks with cream, then pour over the rabbit on a hot dish.

  5. Drizzle lemon juice over the rabbit and serve.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Clove + laureltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender during slow, moist cooking.
Fat bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour that carries into the stock and vegetables.
Baked flour
Thickens the stock into a sauce as its starch swells when heated.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce when gently heated, giving it a smooth, creamy body.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth texture that softens the sharpness of the lemon.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, creamy sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk and cream mixture. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently but can scramble if the sauce is too hot. Pour the mixture in off the heat or over a low heat, stirring steadily, so the sauce turns smooth rather than curdled.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, carrot, onion, garlic, celery, parsley, laurel):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, carrot, onion, garlic, celery, parsley, laurel. 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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