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Fricassee of Rabbit, with Mushrooms

A stew of rabbit pieces cooked with butter, ham, mushrooms, lemon, flour, stock, 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.

Stew

  1. In a stewpan, melt butter, add ham and mushrooms, squeeze in lemon juice, cover, and cook gently on a slow stove for an hour.

  2. Skim the butter from the liquid and place it in a clean stewpan.

Make the sauce and serve

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

  2. Add the liquid from the rabbit and mushrooms, a little stock, and cream; let it boil while stirring.

  3. Strain the mixture through a tammy and combine with the rabbit and mushrooms.

  4. Season with a dust of sugar, pepper, and salt.

  5. Serve the rabbit with mushrooms on top, garnished 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, becoming tender during slow gentle cooking.
Butter
Carries flavour in the stew and enriches the sauce with fat.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth sauce when cooked with butter.
Mushrooms
Add earthy aroma and moisture to the stewed mixture.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, silkier texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the butter and cooking it briefly. Cooking flour in fat for a few minutes removes its raw taste and lets it thicken evenly. Adding liquid without this step, or stopping too early, leaves lumps and a floury flavour in the sauce.

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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