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Rabbit Fricassee

A rabbit stew with butter, flour, stock, milk, and vegetables, thickened into a sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Rabbit Fricassee

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Cut the rabbit into neat joints.

  2. Rinse the rabbit in warm water.

  3. Place the rabbit in a stewpan and add enough white stock to cover it.

Stew

  1. Bring the stew to a boil.

  2. Add the prepared vegetables, peppercorns, and a little salt.

  3. Cover the stew closely.

  4. Cook gently for about 1.5 hours, or until the rabbit is tender, adding milk as needed to replace the stock.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a separate pan.

  2. Add the flour to the melted butter and stir gently without browning.

  3. Set the butter-flour mixture aside.

  4. Remove the cooked rabbit from the stew and keep it warm.

  5. Strain the stock.

  6. Add 1 pint of the strained stock to the butter-flour mixture, stirring until boiling.

  7. Simmer gently for about 10 minutes.

  8. Pass the vegetables through a fine sieve.

  9. Stir the purée into the sauce.

  10. Season to taste.

Finish and serve

  1. Return the rabbit to the sauce.

  2. Heat thoroughly.

  3. Serve.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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 long, gentle simmering.
Butter
Fat that combines with flour to form a roux, enriching the sauce's body and flavour.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter and stock, giving it body.
White stock
Liquid that cooks the rabbit and forms the base of the sauce.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softness to the sauce and replaces stock lost during cooking.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they soften into the stew and sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the butter and flour without browning. Cooking the flour gently in butter until it is just combined cooks out its raw taste and lets it thicken smoothly. Browning changes its colour and flavour and weakens its thickening power.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, butter, flour, milk, carrot, turnip, celery):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, butter, flour, milk, carrot, turnip, celery. 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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