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Fricasseed Rabbit

A rabbit stew thickened with butter and flour, finished with Madeira wine or cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fricasseed Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Stew the rabbit

  1. In a stew-pan with a tightly fitting cover, season the rabbit pieces with cayenne pepper, salt, and mace.

  2. Add hot water and stew until the rabbit begins to tenderize.

  3. Mix butter and flour to thicken the gravy, then add to the stew.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, pour in the Madeira wine or cream.

  2. Serve immediately.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  3. Rabbit + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,448 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Rabbit + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,334 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-pentylpyridine (fat).

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 main meat, which becomes tender during slow stewing in liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy mouthfeel to the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy as it is added to the stew.
Madeira wine or cream
Adds richness and depth to the gravy, with Madeira also contributing sweetness and aroma.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavour to the rabbit during stewing.

The step that matters

Adding the Madeira or cream just before serving. Cream can split and wine loses its aroma when kept at a hard boil for long. Adding them at the end, off the boil, keeps the gravy smooth and the flavours fresh.

Swap the mace

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

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

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