Skip to main content
Main

Fricaseed Rabbits

A rabbit stew with butter, flour, consomme, cream, egg yolk, and mushrooms.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Fricaseed Rabbits

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Cut the rabbits into pieces.

  2. Blanch the rabbit pieces in boiling water for 1 minute.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan.

  2. Sauté the mushrooms until they begin to fry.

  3. Stir in the flour.

  4. Gradually mix in the consomme.

  5. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  6. Add the rabbits to the boiling consomme.

  7. Let the rabbits cook gently until done.

  8. Transfer the rabbits to another stewpan.

  9. Reduce the sauce until thick.

  10. Mix in the boiling cream.

  11. Continue until the sauce reaches the thickness of béchamel.

  12. Squeeze the sauce through a tammy over the rabbits.

Finish and serve

  1. Heat the sauce.

  2. Add the egg yolk and a little cream.

  3. Serve hot with a few mushrooms.

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 + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Rabbit + creamtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together409 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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

Rabbits
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender as it cooks gently in the sauce.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries flavour at the start of the sauce base.
Flour
Thickens the consomme into a smooth sauce as it cooks.
Consomme
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving it savoury depth.
Cream
Adds richness and body, making the sauce silky and smooth.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the finished sauce, giving it a velvety texture.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk. Egg yolk thickens when heated gently but can scramble if the sauce is boiling. Heat the sauce gently and do not let it boil after the yolk goes in, so it stays smooth and glossy.

“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.

You might also like

Mushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesRabbit PattiesRabbit Patties6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes