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Brown Fricassee of Rabbit

A stew of rabbit pieces browned and simmered in a sauce of butter, flour, stock, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Garlic and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Brown Fricassee of Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Soak the rabbit in cold water with garlic for 1 hour.

  2. Dry the rabbit and dredge each piece in baked flour.

Brown the ingredients

  1. Fry the onions and mushrooms in butter until slightly browned, then drain.

  2. Fry the rabbit in the same butter until pale brown, then drain.

Make the gravy

  1. Mix flour, pepper, salt, sugar, parsley, mixed herbs, Harvey sauce, and stock in the butter; boil for 10 minutes.

  2. Skim and strain the mixture.

Simmer and serve

  1. Add bacon to the gravy with the rabbit and simmer gently for 25 minutes.

  2. Add mushrooms, onions, Marsala or sherry, and lemon juice; continue to simmer for 15-20 minutes.

  3. Serve very 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. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Garlic + mushroomtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,700 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  5. Garlic + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

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

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 during the long gentle simmer in the gravy.
Butter
Browns the rabbit, onions and mushrooms and adds richness to the frying stage.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a gravy and helps the rabbit pieces brown.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the gravy that the rabbit simmers in.
Bacon
Adds smoky, salty fat that flavours the gravy during simmering.
Marsala or sherry
Adds sweetness and depth to the gravy when added near the end.

The step that matters

Simmer gently after adding the rabbit and bacon. A gentle simmer lets the meat become tender and keeps the gravy smooth; a hard boil toughens the proteins and can break the sauce.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, garlic, flour, onion, mushroom, butter, pepper):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, garlic, flour, onion, mushroom, butter, pepper. 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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