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Fricasseed Rabbit

A rabbit fricassee cooked with butter, spices, and a cream‑egg sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,768 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Fricasseed Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Make a hole in the rabbit's leg, insert a goose quill, and blow to separate the skin from the meat.

  2. Remove the skin and wash the rabbit thoroughly.

  3. Joint the rabbit and season with salt and pepper.

Brown and stew

  1. Melt the butter in a frying pan over medium heat.

  2. Lay the rabbit flat in the pan and cover closely.

  3. Brown the rabbit on both sides, turning frequently.

  4. Once browned, add the hot water, parsley, cloves, mace, and flour mixture.

  5. Cover and stew for one hour or until cooked through.

Finish the gravy and serve

  1. Remove the rabbit, leaving the gravy in the pan.

  2. In a bowl, combine the cream and beaten egg.

  3. Pour this mixture into the gravy and boil briefly.

  4. Remove the spices from the gravy and pour it over the rabbit 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. Parsley + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender as it stews slowly in liquid.
Butter
Adds fat for browning the rabbit and enriches the flavour of the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy as it heats with the water.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the gravy.
Egg
Thickens the cream mixture as it heats, giving the gravy a smoother, richer body.

The step that matters

Adding the cream and egg to the gravy. Once the egg and cream are in, the gravy must only be brought to a brief boil. Prolonged or vigorous boiling can curdle the egg, leaving the sauce grainy instead of smooth.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, butter, parsley, clove, flour, cream, egg):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, butter, parsley, clove, flour, 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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