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Fricaseed Rabbits

A rabbit stew cooked in a butter, flour, consommé, and cream sauce with mushrooms and egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 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 consommé and bring to a boil.

  5. Add the rabbits to the boiling sauce.

  6. Simmer until cooked through.

  7. Transfer the rabbits to another stewpan.

  8. Reduce the sauce until thick.

  9. Mix in the boiling cream until the sauce is the thickness of béchamel.

  10. Pass the sauce through a fine sieve over the rabbits.

Finish and serve

  1. Heat the sauce.

  2. Add the egg yolk.

  3. Add a few mushrooms.

  4. Serve hot.

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 simmers in the sauce.
Butter
Provides fat for cooking the base and adds richness to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the consommé.
Consommé
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and gives it savoury flavour.
Cream
Adds richness and body, helping the sauce reach a smooth, thick texture.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the sauce, giving it a smooth, velvety texture.

The step that matters

Mix in the boiling cream. Adding cream to a boiling sauce can cause it to separate or curdle if it is not controlled. Reducing first and then adding the egg yolk later keeps the sauce smooth and thick.

“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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