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Fricassee of Rabbit

A stew of rabbit in a white stock, onions, carrot, turnip, celery, milk, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Fricassee of Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the rabbit joints and place them in a stewpan.

  2. Add enough white stock to cover the rabbit.

  3. Bring the stock to a boil.

  4. Add the sliced onions, chopped carrot, chopped turnip, chopped celery, salt, and pepper.

Cook

  1. Cook slowly for 1½ hours.

  2. Add the milk and let it simmer for an additional 30 minutes.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Remove the rabbit and place it in the center of a serving dish.

  2. Strain the cooking liquid over the rabbit.

  3. Blend flour into the cooking liquid and return the mixture to the saucepan.

  4. Bring to a boil.

  5. Replace the rabbit in the saucepan and heat through.

  6. Adjust seasoning.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Rabbit
Slow cooking in stock makes the meat tender and lets it absorb the flavour of the broth.
Milk
Adds richness and a creamy body to the cooking liquid, softening its savoury edge.
Flour
Starch thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth sauce that coats the rabbit.
Onions
Break down during slow cooking, adding sweetness and depth to the stock.

The step that matters

Blend flour into the cooking liquid. Flour must be fully mixed in and brought to a boil so its starch swells and thickens the sauce smoothly; added in lumps, it stays grainy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, carrot, turnip, celery, pepper, milk, flour):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, carrot, turnip, celery, pepper, milk, flour. 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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