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Fricassee of Rabbit

A rabbit stew with onion, herbs, and a parsley or onion sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Fricassee of Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the rabbit in warm water for 1 hour.

  2. Cut the rabbit into neat pieces.

Cook

  1. Place the rabbit in a stewpan with the stock, onion, and herbs.

  2. Simmer for 1 hour or until tender.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Make the sauce with the cooking liquid.

  2. Serve neatly on a hot dish.

  3. Pour the sauce over the rabbit.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Clove + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit
Provides the meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle simmering in liquid.
Stock or water
Moist cooking liquid that tenderises the rabbit and forms the base of the sauce.
Parsley or onion sauce
Adds a creamy, savoury coating that moistens and flavours the cooked rabbit.

The step that matters

Simmer for 1 hour or until tender. Simmering gently rather than boiling keeps the meat from toughening and drying out, and tenderness, not the clock alone, shows when it is done.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, clove, pepper, parsley. 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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