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To Fricajjee Rabbits

A rabbit stew flavored with mace, nutmeg, lemon peel, cayenne, and white gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

To Fricajjee Rabbits

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Wash the rabbits well and cut them into small pieces.

  2. Soak the pieces in a mixture of milk and water for 1 hour to remove blood.

  3. Dry the rabbits with a cloth and season with beaten mace, grated nutmeg, lemon peel, cayenne, and salt.

Cook the stew

  1. Melt a lump of butter in a stew pan and add the rabbits.

  2. Cook gently for 30 minutes, turning them frequently to avoid browning.

  3. Add 1 cup of white gravy and 1 cup of cream, and continue cooking.

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

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

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 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

Young rabbits
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender with gentle, slow cooking.
Butter
Adds fat that carries flavour and enriches the pan.
White gravy
Adds liquid and body so the rabbit simmers in a sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the sauce.
Beaten mace
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the meat.
Grated nutmeg
Adds warm, sweet aroma that complements the cream and meat.

The step that matters

Cook gently and turn the rabbit often. Gentle heat keeps the meat from toughening and drying out, and turning spreads heat evenly so pieces cook through without scorching or browning unevenly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, milk, nutmeg, lemon, pepper, butter, cream):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, milk, nutmeg, lemon, pepper, butter, cream. 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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