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Fricassee Rabbits Brown

A rabbit fricassee cooked with butter, water, lemon pickle, mushroom ketchup, browning sauce, anchovy, lemon, cayenne pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Sauce and anchovy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,057 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Fricassee Rabbits Brown

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Fry the rabbits in butter until light brown.

  2. Place them in a pan with water, lemon pickle, mushroom ketchup, browning sauce, anchovy, lemon, cayenne pepper, and salt.

Cook and serve

  1. Stew over low heat until cooked through.

  2. Thicken the gravy, strain it, and pour over the rabbits before serving.

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. Sauce + anchovytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 through slow stewing in liquid.
Butter
Browns the rabbit surface, adding color and a rich, savory flavor.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds deep savory, umami flavor to the gravy.
Anchovy
Dissolves into the liquid, adding savory depth without a clearly fishy taste.

The step that matters

Stew over low heat until cooked through. Gentle, low heat lets the connective tissue in the rabbit break down slowly, keeping the meat tender and moist. High heat would toughen the meat and reduce the liquid too quickly.

“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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