Skip to main content
Main

Fricassee of Rabbit or Chicken

A stew of rabbit (or chicken) simmered with celery, parsley, bacon, and a creamy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Fricassee of Rabbit or Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Soak the rabbit joints in lukewarm water for 30 minutes, then drain.

  2. Combine the rabbit, celery, parsley, and bacon in a stewpan.

  3. Cover the mixture with milk or water and simmer for 20 minutes, skimming regularly.

  4. Strain the stock into a basin, removing the rabbit and bacon pieces.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in another stewpan.

  2. Mix the melted butter with the flour.

  3. Gradually add the stock to the butter‑flour mixture, stirring until it boils.

  4. Trim the rabbit pieces and bacon, then add them to the sauce.

  5. Simmer the sauce until the rabbit and bacon are tender, skimming off any fat.

  6. Mix the cream with the egg yolk.

  7. Stir the cream‑egg mixture into the sauce, heating gently without boiling.

Serve

  1. Serve the rabbit on a dish, topped with the sauce.

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. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 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 as it simmers slowly in the liquid.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and richness, and carries the flavour of the dish.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce when cooked with the melted butter.
Egg yolk
Thickens and enriches the cream, giving the finished sauce a smooth, rich body.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the finished sauce.
Streaky bacon
Adds savoury, smoky flavour to the stock and the finished dish.

The step that matters

Adding the cream and egg yolk. Egg yolk thickens when heated but curdles if it boils, so the cream-egg mixture must be stirred into the sauce over gentle heat without letting it boil.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, parsley, milk, butter, flour, cream, egg):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, parsley, milk, butter, flour, cream, egg. 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.

More rabbit fricassee recipes

with Mushrooms 3White 3 See all 73 →

You might also like

Cream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipesCelery CroquettesCelery Croquettes16 recipesCelery Cream SoupCelery Cream Soup15 recipes