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A Brown Fricassee

A brown fricassee is a dish of rabbit or chicken pieces coated in egg yolk and spice, fried and finished with gravy, wine, and mushrooms.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

A Brown Fricassee

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Skin the rabbits or chickens and cut them into small pieces.

  2. Rub the pieces with the yolks of the eggs.

  3. Mix grated bread, beaten mace, and grated nutmeg together. Roll the meat in the mixture.

Fry and braise

  1. Melt butter in a stewpan and add the meat. Fry until golden brown, ensuring they do not stick to the pan.

  2. Pour off excess butter and add brown gravy, white wine, mushrooms or pickle, and salt if needed.

  3. Thicken with butter rolled in flour, then serve.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. White wine + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs yolks
Bind the coating so the breadcrumb mixture adheres to the meat.
Grated bread
Forms a crumb coating that browns and crisps in the butter.
Butter
Fries the meat to golden brown and adds richness.
Brown gravy
Provides the liquid and savoury body of the sauce.
Butter rolled in flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks.

The step that matters

Fry until golden brown without sticking. Browning the coated meat in butter builds colour and flavour through the Maillard reaction. Keeping the pieces from sticking means the coating stays intact and the browned bits are not scorched, so the sauce made afterwards tastes clean rather than burnt.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, egg, bread, nutmeg, butter, white wine, mushroom):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, egg, bread, nutmeg, butter, white wine, mushroom. 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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