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Fricassee Rabbit

A stew of rabbit pieces simmered with parsley, salt, cayenne, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Fricassee Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Disjoint the rabbits and separate the pieces with a sharp knife.

  2. Place the rabbit pieces in a stewpan and cover with warm water.

  3. Add chopped parsley, salt, and cayenne pepper.

Stew

  1. Stew slowly until half cooked.

  2. Roll bits of butter in flour, add them to the stewpan, and stir well.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

Rabbit
Provides the meat, which becomes tender through slow stewing.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, giving the sauce a smooth, silky body.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid as its starch swells with heat.

The step that matters

Adding the butter and flour. Rolling the butter in flour coats the flour so it disperses evenly instead of clumping. Stirring well then lets the starch thicken the liquid smoothly as it heats.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Turmericfits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Nutmegfits about as well

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