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Fricassee of Rabbit, with Mushrooms

A rabbit fricassee cooked with mushrooms, butter, ham, lemon, and cream, served with croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 of Rabbit, with Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Cut the rabbit into pieces and blanch in cold water.

  2. When boiling, remove from heat and wash in several waters.

  3. Remove the second skin and trim any ragged pieces.

Make the sauce

  1. In a stewpan, melt butter, add ham and mushrooms, squeeze in lemon juice, cover, and cook gently for 30 minutes.

  2. Skim the butter from the liquid and transfer to a clean stewpan.

  3. Stir in flour and cook for a few minutes.

  4. Add the liquid from the rabbit and mushrooms, stock, and cream; boil while stirring for a few minutes.

  5. Strain through a tammy and combine with the rabbit and mushrooms.

  6. Season with sugar, pepper, and salt.

Serve

  1. Serve the rabbit first, topped with mushrooms, and garnish with croutons.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Rabbit + creamtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together409 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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
Forms the main body of the dish, providing the meat that the sauce accompanies.
Butter
Carries the cooking of the ham and mushrooms and, with flour, forms the base of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce when cooked briefly in the butter.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and moisture to the sauce as they cook gently with the ham.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the sauce, giving it a smoother, silkier texture.
Lemon
Its juice adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring in the flour and boiling the sauce. Flour must cook for a few minutes in the butter to lose its raw taste, and the sauce must be stirred while it boils so it thickens smoothly without lumps.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Coconutfits about as well
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Raisinfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, butter, ham, mushroom, flour, cream, sugar. 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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