Skip to main content
Main

A Brown Fricassee

A fricassee is a stew of rabbit or chicken pieces coated in egg yolk and spice, browned in butter, then simmered in gravy and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

A Brown Fricassee

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Skin the rabbits or chickens and cut them into small pieces.

  2. Rub the pieces with yolks of eggs.

  3. Mix grated bread, beaten mace, and grated nutmeg together, then roll the meat in this mixture.

Fry and simmer

  1. Melt butter in a stewpan, then add the meat and fry until golden brown, ensuring it doesn't stick to the pan.

  2. Pour off excess butter, then add brown gravy, white wine, mushrooms, pickle, and salt if desired.

  3. Add a piece of butter rolled in flour to thicken the sauce.

  4. Once thickened, serve the fricassee 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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. White wine + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  4. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Yolks of eggs
Bind the coating and enrich the meat with fat and richness.
Grated bread
Forms a crumb coating that helps the meat brown and gives a light texture.
Butter
Fat for frying that browns the meat and carries flavour.
Butter rolled in flour
Flour and butter thicken the gravy into a smooth, glossy sauce.
Brown gravy
Supplies the liquid base and savoury depth of the sauce.

The step that matters

Fry the meat until golden brown without sticking. Browning builds deep flavour through the Maillard reaction, but meat that sticks can scorch and leave bitter notes in the sauce. Pouring off excess butter keeps the sauce from becoming greasy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, egg, bread, nutmeg, butter, white wine, mushroom):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, egg, bread, nutmeg, butter, white wine, mushroom. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesMushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipes