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Fricassee of Rabbit

A rabbit stew with milk-based sauce, flavored with onion, thyme, nutmeg, and flour, optionally garnished with bacon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,907 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Fricassee of Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Boil the onion and thyme in the milk until it reduces to 1/2 pint.

  2. Add nutmeg, salt, and pepper to taste.

  3. Mix flour with cold milk or cream, then stir into the boiling milk.

  4. When thickened, add rabbit joints and heat for 15 minutes without boiling.

Serve

  1. Arrange rabbit on a serving dish, pour sauce over it, and garnish with bacon if desired.

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. Thyme + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,907 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit
Is the main protein, cooked gently in the sauce so it stays tender and moist.
Milk
Forms the base of the sauce, reduced with onion and thyme for flavour and body.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce as it heats and starch swells.
Onion
Adds savoury depth and sweetness to the milk as it simmers and reduces.

The step that matters

Heat the rabbit without boiling. Once the sauce has thickened, boiling can curdle the milk and toughen the rabbit's proteins. Keeping it just below a boil preserves a smooth sauce and tender meat.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, milk, thyme, nutmeg, pepper, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, milk, thyme, nutmeg, pepper, 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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