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Fricasseed Rabbits

Fricassee Rabbits is a stew of rabbit pieces simmered with water or broth, seasoned with cayenne, salt, parsley, and finished with butter, flour, cream, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Fricasseed Rabbits

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the rabbit

  1. Place the cut-up rabbits in a stew pan.

  2. Season with Cayenne pepper, coarse sea salt, and chopped parsley.

  3. Add 2 cups of warm water or veal broth and simmer over low heat until the rabbits are tender.

  4. When the rabbits are halfway done, add bits of butter rolled in flour.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, stir in ½ cup of thick cream and grated nutmeg, being careful not to let it boil.

  2. Transfer the rabbit pieces to a hot dish and pour the gravy over them.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Rabbits
Provide the meat that becomes tender during slow simmering in liquid.
Butter
Rolled in flour, it thickens the cooking liquid into a richer gravy and adds fat.
Flour
Coats the butter so it thickens the gravy as it melts into the liquid.
Thick cream
Adds richness and body to the gravy and softens its flavour when stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Stirring in the cream. Cream boiled for long can curdle or separate and turn grainy. Adding it just before serving, off the boil, keeps the gravy smooth and rich.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Sagefits about as well
  4. Cinnamonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, pepper, veal, butter, flour, cream, nutmeg. 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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