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Fricassee of Rabbit

A rabbit fricassee made with milk, onion, thyme, nutmeg, flour, and optional bacon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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. In a saucepan, boil the onion and thyme in the milk until it reduces to ½ pint.

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

  3. Mix the flour with the cold milk or cream.

  4. Stir the flour mixture into the boiling milk.

  5. Cook until the sauce thickens, then add the rabbit joints.

Cook and serve

  1. Let the rabbit heat in the sauce for 15 minutes without boiling.

  2. Arrange the rabbit on a serving dish.

  3. Pour the sauce over the rabbit.

  4. Garnish with bacon slices 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
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender as it heats gently in the sauce.
Milk
Forms the base of the sauce, carrying the onion and thyme flavour.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce that clings to the rabbit.
Onion
Adds savoury depth to the milk that forms the sauce.

The step that matters

Let the rabbit heat in the sauce for 15 minutes without boiling. Boiling a sauce containing flour and milk can make it curdle or separate and toughen the meat. Gentle heat keeps the sauce smooth and the rabbit tender.

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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