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Fricassee of Rabbit

A rabbit stew simmered with onions, turnip, pickled pork or bacon, salt, peppercorns, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,585 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Fricassee of Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Place the rabbit in a saucepan of boiling water.

  2. Add the onions, turnip, pickled pork or bacon, salt, and peppercorns.

  3. Boil sharply for 2 minutes, then remove any scum that rises.

  4. Reduce heat and simmer for about 1 hour, or until the rabbit is tender.

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. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Rabbit + porktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together832 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Onion + porktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Rabbit + turniptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together117 recipes

    Shared aroma: geraniol (rose, geranium).

  5. Turnip + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,358 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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 through long, gentle simmering.
Pickled pork or bacon
Adds salty, savoury fat and depth of flavour to the cooking liquid.
Onions
Release sweetness and aromatic flavour into the broth as they cook.
Turnip
Adds mild sweetness and body as it softens in the liquid.

The step that matters

Removing the scum after the sharp boil. Scum is coagulated protein and impurities that rise when the liquid first boils. Skimming it keeps the broth clear and clean-tasting. Simmering gently afterward prevents the meat from toughening and the broth from turning cloudy.

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, onion, pork):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Turnipthe original
  4. Chivefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, onion, pork. 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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