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Brown Fricassee of Chickens or Rabbits

A brown fricassee made with chicken or rabbit, lard, truffles, morels, mushrooms, stock, and optional fried oysters.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,172 recipes. Both carry 1-butyl acetate, which smells fruity, banana. The science ↓

Brown Fricassee of Chickens or Rabbits

Ingredients

Directions

Fry the meat

  1. Heat pure lard in a pan.

  2. Fry the chicken or rabbit pieces in the lard until they are a fine light brown.

  3. Drain the fried pieces on a cloth.

Stew and serve

  1. In a stewpan, combine the fried pieces with blanched truffles, morels, stock or gravy, and button mushrooms.

  2. Let the mixture stew gently until cooked through.

  3. Season the stew to taste.

  4. Serve hot, optionally garnished with fried oysters.

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. Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

  2. Truffle + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,900 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Chicken + truffletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together756 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Egg + oystertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,103 recipes

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

  5. Truffle + oystertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together304 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken or rabbit
Provides the main body of the dish and releases juices that flavour the stew.
Pure lard
Fries the meat, adding fat for richness and helping it brown.
Morels
Add earthy, savoury aroma and a meaty texture to the stew.
Blanched truffles
Contribute a concentrated, aromatic flavour to the sauce.
Button mushrooms
Add moisture and savoury depth as they soften in the stew.
Good stock or gravy
Forms the liquid base that carries flavour and keeps the meat moist as it stews.

The step that matters

Frying the meat to a fine light brown. Browning creates flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pieces fried too pale miss this depth, while over-browning turns bitter. Draining well keeps the stew from tasting greasy.

“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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