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Fricasseed Rabbit

A rabbit stew with bacon, butter, flour, broth, wine, onions, mushrooms, and bouquet garni, served with toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: White wine and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,765 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity. The science ↓

Fricasseed Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the meat

  1. Brown small bacon dice in a stew pan with a good amount of butter.

  2. Remove the bacon and add the rabbit to the pan, browning it nicely all over.

  3. Return the bacon to the pan, then sprinkle in the flour.

Braise and serve

  1. Gradually moisten with broth and white wine, seasoning with pepper, salt, and bouquet garni.

  2. Add small onions and button mushrooms.

  3. Serve with fried or toasted bread arranged around the dish.

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. White wine + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Mushroom + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit (in the method)
Provides the main meat, which browns and becomes tender as it simmers.
Bacon
Renders fat into the pan and adds savoury, smoky flavour to the sauce base.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a light sauce when it is mixed with the fat and broth.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma, balancing the richness of the butter and bacon.
Button mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and moisture that enriches the sauce as they cook.

The step that matters

Browning the rabbit. Searing the rabbit until well browned on all sides builds deep flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pale meat added to the liquid gives a flat, washed-out sauce.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, white wine, pepper, mushroom, bread):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, white wine, pepper, mushroom, bread. 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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