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Fricasse of Rabbit

A stew of rabbit browned in fat, simmered with onions, flour, stock, spices, and lemon slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

Fricasse of Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the rabbit in warm water and dry it.

  2. Cut the rabbit into joints.

  3. Dip the rabbit joints in flour, salt, and pepper.

  4. Heat the fat until very hot.

  5. Fry the rabbit joints until browned.

Make the gravy

  1. Peel and finely chop the onions.

  2. Fry the onions in the same fat until brown.

  3. Add the remaining flour to the onions and cook until the mixture is brown.

  4. Pour in the stock and stir until it boils.

  5. Add spices.

  6. Add the fried rabbit and simmer gently for 1 hour.

Serve

  1. Remove the rabbit to a hot dish.

  2. Strain the gravy over the rabbit.

  3. Garnish with thin slices of lemon.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Rabbit + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,292 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Rabbit + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together626 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

Rabbit
Is the main protein; browning the joints first builds colour and flavour for the dish.
Flour
Coats the joints so they brown well, and thickens the gravy as it cooks with the onions.
Onions
Browned in the fat, they add sweetness and savoury depth to the gravy.
Stock
Forms the liquid of the gravy and carries flavour into the rabbit during simmering.
Dripping or cooking fat
Conducts heat for browning the rabbit and onions and carries their flavour.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour with the onions until brown. Flour that is browned in fat develops nutty flavour and colour, and cooking it before adding liquid helps prevent lumps and a raw, pasty taste in the gravy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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