Name: To Fricasee Rabbits Brown
Ingredients: 2 rabbits, cut for eating; ¼ cup butter; 1 pint water; 1 teaspoon lemon pickle; 1 tablespoon mushroom ketchup; 1 anchovy; 1 ounce truffles, chopped; cayenne pepper, to taste; coarse sea salt, to taste

Why it works: Ketchup and anchovy match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 479 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

To Fricasee Rabbits Brown

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Fry the rabbits in butter until light brown.
Place them in a pan with water, lemon pickle, mushroom ketchup, anchovy, truffles, cayenne pepper, and salt.

Stew and serve

Stew over low heat until cooked through.
Thicken the gravy and strain it over the rabbits.
Garnish with pickles.

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.

Ketchup + anchovytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together479 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Mushroom + truffletop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,900 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,525 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Butter + truffletop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,209 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbits: Provide the main meat, which becomes tender through slow stewing.
Butter: Browns the rabbit pieces and adds richness to the dish.
Truffles: Add a strong, earthy aroma to the gravy.
Mushroom ketchup: Adds concentrated savory, umami depth to the gravy.

The step that matters

Stew over low heat until cooked through. Gentle, low heat lets the rabbit become tender and keeps the liquid from boiling hard, which would toughen the meat and reduce the gravy too quickly.

“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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To Fricasee Rabbits Brown