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White Fricassee of Rabbits

A white fricassee made with rabbit, white wine, lemon, herbs, and a cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

White Fricassee of Rabbits

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Skin and cut the rabbits into pieces.

  2. Clean them in warm water.

Stew

  1. Stew the rabbits in a mixture of water and milk with lemon peel, white wine, onion, cloves, and sweet herbs until tender.

  2. Remove the rabbits and strain the liquid.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Mix a small amount of the liquid with cream, butter, and flour in a pan, stirring until the butter melts.

  2. Add the rabbits back to the pan with grated lemon peel, mace, and lemon juice.

  3. Heat everything together until hot.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. White wine + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. White wine + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  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

Rabbits
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender through slow stewing.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and helps form the sauce base with the flour.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce when cooked with butter.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the stewing liquid.

The step that matters

Stirring the butter, flour and liquid together. If the flour is not stirred in well with the butter and liquid, lumps form and the sauce thickens unevenly. Stirring keeps the starch dispersed so the sauce turns smooth as it heats.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, white wine, onion, lemon, cream, butter, flour):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, white wine, onion, lemon, cream, butter, flour. 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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