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Fricassee Rabbit

A rabbit stew with butter, mushrooms, onions, flour, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Fricassee Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the rabbit into pieces and season with salt and pepper.

Make the fricassee

  1. Melt the butter in a pan and brown the rabbit pieces on all sides.

  2. Add the mushrooms and onions, cooking until softened.

  3. Sprinkle the flour over the mixture and stir well.

  4. Pour in the stock and simmer until the rabbit is tender.

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

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

  2. Mushroom + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

  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
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through slow simmering in liquid.
Butter
Adds fat for browning the rabbit and carries flavour through the dish.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth sauce when stirred in with the fat and juices.
Button mushrooms
Add savoury, earthy flavour and moisture as they soften in the pan.
Button onions
Soften and turn sweet as they cook, adding body to the sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the rabbit pieces. Searing the meat until golden on all sides builds deep, savoury flavour through browning. Pale, crowded pieces steam instead, giving a flatter taste and a weaker base for the sauce.

Swap the onion

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

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

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