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Fricasseed Rabbit

A rabbit stew cooked with onions, flour, water, and parsley, served with roasted or fried potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Fricasseed Rabbit

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and brown

  1. Clean the rabbit well and season it with salt and pepper.

  2. Fry the rabbit in hot lard until it is a delicate brown.

  3. Remove the rabbit and pour out some of the grease.

Make the fricassée

  1. Add the chopped onions and flour to the skillet, stirring well.

  2. Pour in enough water to cover the rabbit, then return the rabbit to the skillet.

  3. Cover and let it boil for 30 minutes.

  4. Just before serving, stir in the chopped parsley.

Serve

  1. Serve with roasted or fried potatoes.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Rabbit + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,292 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
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender as it simmers in the sauce.
Lard
Fat for frying that browns the rabbit and adds savory flavor.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook, adding aroma and body to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth, lightly bound sauce.

The step that matters

Frying the rabbit until delicate brown. Browning builds flavor through the Maillard reaction, which gives the sauce depth. Pale rabbit tastes flatter, and frying too hot can scorch the coating before the meat cooks through.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, pepper, flour, parsley, fried potato. 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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