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Rabbits in a Fricassee

A rabbit stew with butter, flour, consommé, cream, mushrooms, and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Rabbits in a Fricassee

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Blanch the rabbit pieces in boiling water for 1 minute, then skim them.

Make the sauce

  1. In a stewpan, melt the butter and sauté the mushrooms until they begin to fry.

  2. Stir in the flour, then gradually mix in the consommé and bring to a boil.

  3. Add the rabbit pieces and simmer until cooked through.

  4. Transfer the rabbit to another stewpan and reduce the sauce until thick.

  5. Mix in the boiling cream until it reaches the thickness of béchamel sauce.

  6. Pass the sauce through a fine sieve over the rabbit to heat it.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the chopped mushrooms, egg yolk, and a little cream, then serve hot.

  2. For a variation, add parsley, lemon thyme, and lemon juice before serving.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Mushroom + parsleytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,132 recipes

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

  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 main meat, which becomes tender as it simmers in the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour through the sauce and mushrooms.
Flour
Thickens the consommé into a sauce as it cooks.
Consommé
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving savoury flavour.
Cream
Adds richness and body, thickening the sauce toward a béchamel-like consistency.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the finished sauce, giving it a smooth, glossy body.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk. Egg yolk thickens when heated, so if the sauce is too hot when it is added, the yolk can scramble and turn grainy. Add it off the heat or with the sauce no longer boiling.

“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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