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Fricassee Rabbit

A stew of rabbit in a creamy sauce with herbs, onions, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Fricassee Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Soak the rabbit joints in salt and water for 30 minutes.

Stew the rabbit

  1. In a saucepan, combine the rabbits, cold water, sweet herbs, minced onion, mace, nutmeg, pepper, and salt pork.

  2. Cover and stew until the rabbits are tender.

  3. Remove the rabbits and keep them warm in a dish.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Add cream to the gravy.

  2. Add beaten eggs, stirring in gradually.

  3. Add butter.

  4. Add a thickening made from flour and a little milk.

  5. Bring the sauce to a boil.

  6. Remove from heat and stir in lemon juice.

  7. Pour the sauce 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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Rabbit + porktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together832 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  4. Onion + porktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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.
Eggs
Thicken the cream sauce as they set gently with heat, giving it body.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, mellow body to the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the rabbit pieces.
Salt pork
Adds savoury fat and flavour to the stewing liquid.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, creamy sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the beaten eggs. Eggs thicken when heated but can curdle or scramble if the sauce is too hot or added all at once. Stirring them in gradually and keeping the sauce below a hard boil helps it stay smooth.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, onion, nutmeg, pepper, pork, cream, egg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, onion, nutmeg, pepper, pork, cream, egg. 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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