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To Fricasee Rabbit Brown

A rabbit fricassee cooked in lard, broth, catsup, browning, herbs, lemon, cayenne, salt, thickened with flour and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

To Fricasee Rabbit Brown

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Fry the rabbit joints in lard or dripping until light brown.

  2. Place the rabbit in a stewpan with broth, catsup, browning, sweet herbs, lemon, cayenne pepper, and salt.

  3. Stew over low heat until tender.

  4. Thicken the gravy with flour and butter.

  5. Strain the gravy, dish up the rabbit, and pour the gravy over it.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Rabbit + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  4. Rabbit + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together626 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Rabbit + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,448 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter 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 meat that becomes tender during slow stewing.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the rabbit rather than running off.
Butter
Enriches the thickened gravy, adding richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Lard or dripping
Fat for frying the rabbit, encouraging browning and flavor on the surface.

The step that matters

Stew over low heat until tender. Gentle, low heat lets the connective tissue in the rabbit break down slowly. Vigorous boiling toughens the meat and can make the gravy cloudy.

“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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