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To Fricasee Rabbit White

A rabbit fricassee cooked in veal gravy with lemon pickle, mace, cayenne, and cream.

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 White

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a stewpan, combine rabbit pieces, veal gravy, lemon pickle, lemon peel, mace, cayenne pepper, and salt.

  2. Stew until the rabbit is tender.

  3. Thicken the gravy with flour and butter.

  4. Stir in the thick cream and grated nutmeg, ensuring it does not boil.

  5. Place the rabbit on a dish and strain 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Rabbit + creamtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together409 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender through slow stewing.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it clings to the rabbit pieces.
Butter
Adds richness and helps bind the flour into the thickened gravy.
Thick cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the finished gravy.
Veal gravy
Provides the savoury liquid that the rabbit stews in and the sauce is built on.

The step that matters

Stirring in the cream without boiling. Cream can curdle or separate when it boils, so keeping the gravy below a boil keeps the sauce smooth and creamy.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, veal, lemon, pepper, flour, butter, cream. 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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