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Brown and White Fricassee of Rabbit

A rabbit fricassee cooked with onions, mushrooms, bacon, and a butter‑flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Garlic and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Brown and White Fricassee of Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Soak the rabbit in cold water with garlic for 1 hour.

  2. Dry the rabbit and dredge each piece in baked flour.

  3. In a pan, fry the onions and mushrooms in butter until slightly browned, then drain.

  4. Fry the rabbit in the same butter until pale brown, then drain.

Make the gravy

  1. Mix the remaining butter with flour, pepper, salt, sugar, parsley, mixed herbs, Harvey sauce, and stock; boil for 10 minutes.

  2. Let the mixture sit to allow the butter to rise, then skim and strain.

  3. Add bacon to the gravy with the rabbit and simmer gently for 25 minutes.

  4. Stir in the mushrooms, onions, Marsala or sherry, and lemon juice; continue to simmer for 15-20 minutes.

  5. Serve 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. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Garlic + mushroomtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,700 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  5. Garlic + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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 turns tender and flavourful during slow simmering in the gravy.
Baked flour
Coats the rabbit pieces so they brown lightly and help thicken the gravy.
Butter
Browns the rabbit and vegetables and carries flavour through the dish.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth, lightly bodied gravy.
Bacon
Adds savoury, smoky fat that enriches the gravy as it simmers.
Marsala or sherry
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour to the finished gravy.

The step that matters

Let the butter rise, then skim and strain the gravy. Butter floats on top of a boiled liquid as it cools. Skimming removes the greasy layer and straining removes solids, leaving a clearer, smoother gravy.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, garlic, flour, onion, mushroom, butter, pepper):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, garlic, flour, onion, mushroom, butter, pepper. 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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