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Pricaseed Rabbit

A rabbit stew simmered with water, salt, pepper, mace, cloves, butter, flour, and optional cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Pricaseed Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the rabbit pieces and place them in a stew pan with water.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, mace, and cloves.

Stew and thicken

  1. Let it stew slowly until nearly done.

  2. For a brown fricassee, brown the flour before mixing it with the butter.

  3. Add the butter and flour mixture to the stew.

  4. For a white fricassee, stir in the cream after adding the butter and flour.

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 + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Mace + clovetop 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. Rabbit + creamtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together409 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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 that becomes tender during slow stewing.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour, and helps form the thickened sauce with flour.
Flour
Thickens the stewing liquid into a sauce when cooked with butter.
Cream
Adds richness and a mild, smooth body to the white version of the sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the flour for a brown fricassee. Flour cooked in butter until it turns golden develops a nutty, deeper flavour and colour. Cooking it too briefly leaves a pale, raw-tasting sauce, while cooking it too long can scorch it and taste bitter.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, pepper, clove, butter, flour, cream. 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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