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To Fricassee Rabbits, White

A white rabbit fricassee made with veal gravy, mace, lemon, anchovy, lemon pickle, cayenne pepper, and butter‑flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 Fricassee Rabbits, White

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the rabbit into pieces suitable for serving.

Stew

  1. In a stew-pan, combine the rabbit with veal gravy, mace, lemon slice, anchovy, lemon pickle, cayenne pepper, and salt.

  2. Stew over gentle heat until the rabbit is cooked through.

Thicken and serve

  1. Remove the rabbit and place it in a serving dish.

  2. Thicken the gravy with butter and flour, strain it, and pour over the rabbit.

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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Anchovy + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Veal + anchovytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together456 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

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

Rabbit
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through slow, gentle stewing.
Veal gravy
Supplies the liquid base and savoury depth for the sauce.
Anchovy
Adds deep savoury flavour that rounds out the sauce without tasting fishy.
Butter
Enriches the gravy and gives it a smooth, glossy texture when thickened with flour.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the rabbit rather than running off.

The step that matters

Stew over gentle heat. Rabbit is lean and dries out or toughens if boiled hard. Gentle, steady heat lets the connective tissue soften while the meat stays moist.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, veal, lemon, anchovy, pepper, 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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