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Rabbit En Gibelotte, Fricasseed

A rabbit fricassee cooked with bacon, butter, flour, broth, wine, onions, mushrooms, and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Rabbit En Gibelotte, Fricasseed

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the meat

  1. In a stew-pan, brown the diced bacon in butter.

  2. Remove the bacon and brown the rabbit joints in the same pan.

  3. Return the bacon to the pan with the rabbit.

Make the fricassee

  1. Add flour, then moisten with broth and wine.

  2. Season with pepper, salt, onions, mushrooms, and bouquet garni.

  3. Simmer until the rabbit is cooked through.

Serve

  1. Serve with toasts or fried bread around the dish.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Red wine + mushroomtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together720 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol (smoky, clove).

  4. Mushroom + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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 as it simmers in the sauce.
Bacon fat
Adds savoury fat and flavour for browning the rabbit.
Butter
Browns the bacon and rabbit and adds richness to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a sauce as it is moistened.
Broth
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and keeps the meat moist.
Wine
Adds acidity and depth to the sauce as it simmers.

The step that matters

Browning the rabbit joints. Browning in fat builds deep, savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pale, under-browned joints give a flat-tasting sauce, so the pieces need time to colour before liquid goes in.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, butter, flour, red wine, pepper, mushroom, bread. 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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