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Rabbit, Curried

A rabbit stew flavored with curry powder, butter, onions, and mushroom powder, served with rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Rabbit, Curried

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Empty, skin, and wash the rabbit thoroughly, then cut it into joints.

Make the curry

  1. In a stewpan, melt the butter and add the sliced onions; cook until they are brown but not blackened.

  2. Pour in the boiling stock (or water) and mix the curry powder and flour with a little water; add to the stewpan along with the mushroom powder.

  3. Simmer gently for about 30 minutes, then squeeze in the lemon juice.

Serve

  1. Serve in the center of a dish with boiled rice arranged around it.

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. Mushroom + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,515 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Lemon + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit
Provides the meat that becomes tender during gentle simmering.
Onions
Browning in butter builds sweetness and savoury depth for the sauce.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced aroma that defines the dish.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a sauce as it simmers.
Butter
Carries the onions and adds richness to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the finished curry.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for about 30 minutes. Boiling vigorously can toughen the rabbit meat and make the sauce cloudy or lumpy. A gentle simmer lets the meat become tender while the flour thickens the liquid smoothly. Adding lemon juice at the end keeps its bright flavour from fading.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, butter, onion, flour, mushroom, rice):

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Mangofits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, butter, onion, flour, mushroom, rice. 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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