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Fricaseed Rabbit

A rabbit stew thickened with butter and flour, seasoned with salt, pepper, mace, and cloves, optionally finished with 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 ↓

Fricaseed 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. Brown the flour before mixing it with the butter.

  3. Add the butter rolled in flour to the stew.

  4. Stir in the cream after adding the flour and butter.

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 meat that becomes tender during slow stewing.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the stew liquid into a smooth sauce when mixed with butter.
Cream
Adds richness and a mild, creamy body to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the flour before mixing it with butter. Lightly browning flour gives the sauce a nutty, deeper flavour and a richer colour. Flour added raw can taste pasty, and if it is added to the stew in clumps it will not thicken evenly. Mixing it with butter first helps it disperse smoothly.

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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