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Fricassee of Rabbit, with Mushrooms

A rabbit fricassee cooked with butter, ham, mushrooms, lemon, flour, stock, cream, and seasoned with sugar, pepper, salt, served with croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Fricassee of Rabbit, with Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Blanch the rabbit pieces in cold water until boiling, then wash in several waters.

  2. Remove the second skin and trim any ragged pieces from the rabbit.

Cook the rabbit

  1. In a stewpan, melt the butter, add the ham and mushrooms, and squeeze in the lemon juice.

  2. Cover with paper and cook gently on a slow stove for 30 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. Skim the butter from the liquid and transfer it to a clean stewpan.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook for a few minutes over the fire.

  3. Add the liquid from the rabbit and mushrooms, a little stock, and cream, and let it boil while stirring.

  4. Strain the sauce through a tammy and combine it with the rabbit and mushrooms.

  5. Season with sugar, pepper, and salt.

Serve

  1. Serve the rabbit first, topped with mushrooms, and garnish with croutons.

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

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Rabbit + creamtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together409 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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
Forms the main body of the dish and is the meat that gives the stew its substance.
Butter
Carries flavour and enriches the cooking liquid, giving the dish a rich mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked in the butter, giving it body.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and moisture that becomes part of the sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the finished sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and cream flavours.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour in the butter. Stirring flour into the butter and cooking it briefly lets the starch thicken the sauce smoothly without lumps. Skipping this cooking time leaves a raw floury taste and uneven thickness.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, butter, ham, mushroom, flour, cream, sugar):

  1. Coconutfits about as well
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Raisinfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, butter, ham, mushroom, flour, cream, sugar. 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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