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Fricassee of Rabbit

A rabbit stew with vegetables, finished in a butter‑flour cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Fricassee of Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Wash the rabbit well and blanch it in cold water until it just comes to a boil. Drain the water.

  2. Cut the rabbit into neat joints and place them in a saucepan. Cover with white stock or water.

Cook

  1. Add the chopped carrot, turnip, celery, onion, salt, pepper, and mace. Cook gently for 45 minutes.

  2. Once cooked, lift the rabbit pieces onto a serving dish.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and cook the flour. Strain in the stock used for cooking the rabbit.

  2. Remove from heat and stir in the cream beaten with the egg yolks.

  3. Pour the sauce over the rabbit and serve hot, garnished with button mushrooms.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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 during gentle simmering.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour in the sauce base.
Flour
Cooked in butter, it thickens the stock into a smooth sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and body, giving the sauce a smooth, velvety texture.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the cream sauce when stirred in off the heat.

The step that matters

Stirring the cream and egg yolks into the sauce. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat and can curdle or scramble if the sauce is too hot. Removing the pan from heat before adding them keeps the sauce smooth.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, carrot, turnip, celery, onion, pepper, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, carrot, turnip, celery, onion, pepper, butter. 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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