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Brown Fricassee Rabbit

A rabbit fricassee with butter, mushrooms, onion, eschalot, bacon, stock, vinegar, Harvey sauce, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and sherry are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,176 recipes. Both carry 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol, which smells smoky, clove. The science ↓

Brown Fricassee Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Wash and dry the rabbit, then cut it into small pieces.

  2. Lightly flour each piece and season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

Brown and stew

  1. In a stewpan, melt the butter over medium heat and brown the rabbit pieces well.

  2. Remove the rabbit and place it on kitchen paper.

  3. Add the chopped mushrooms, onion, eschalot, and bacon to the butter, along with 1 tablespoon of flour, and brown everything well.

  4. Pour in the stock, vinegar, Harvey sauce, and sherry; stew for 10 minutes.

  5. Strain the gravy and return it to the stewpan with the rabbit.

  6. Stew gently for 1 hour until the gravy reduces to about ½ cup and thickens.

Garnish and serve

  1. Fry some croutons of bread for garnish.

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. Mushroom + sherrytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,176 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol (smoky, clove).

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

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

  3. Mushroom + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

  4. Vinegar + sherrytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together660 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Rabbit
Provides the meat that becomes tender during long, gentle stewing.
Butter
Carries browning flavour and enriches the sauce with fat.
Flour
Dusting and a tablespoon in the pan help thicken the gravy.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the gravy, dissolving flavour as it reduces.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the gravy.
Bacon
Contributes salty, smoky fat that flavours the gravy.

The step that matters

Browning the rabbit well. Browning creates Maillard flavour compounds and a golden crust. Pieces that are crowded or wet will steam instead, producing bland meat and a weaker gravy base.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, butter, mushroom, vinegar, sauce, sherry, flour):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, butter, mushroom, vinegar, sauce, sherry, 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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