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To Fricassee Rabbits

A rabbit stew with lemon, anchovy, and ketchup, thickened with butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

To Fricassee Rabbits

Ingredients

Directions

Make the fricassee

  1. Brown the rabbit pieces in butter until light brown.

  2. Transfer them to a stew-pan and add water, lemon slice, anchovy, browning sauce, ketchup, lemon pickle, cayenne pepper, and salt.

  3. Stew over low heat until cooked through.

Finish and serve

  1. Thicken the gravy with a mixture of butter and flour, then strain it.

  2. Serve the rabbit with the gravy poured over it and garnish with sliced lemon.

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. Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Anchovy + ketchuptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together479 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  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

Rabbit
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender when slowly stewed.
Butter
Adds richness and browns the rabbit, and with flour forms the thickening for the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the gravy when cooked with butter.
Anchovy
Adds savory depth to the gravy without a distinctly fishy flavor.
Browning sauce
Adds color and a deep, roasted flavor to the gravy.

The step that matters

Stew over low heat until cooked through. Gentle low heat keeps the rabbit meat tender and moist, while high heat toughens muscle fibers and can scorch the liquid before the meat is done.

“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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