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Curry of Canned Rabbit or Chicken

A curry made with canned rabbit or chicken, onions, apple, curry powder, and butter, served over rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,433 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Curry of Canned Rabbit or Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Open the tin of rabbit carefully.

  2. Heat the butter or dripping in a stewpan.

  3. Peel and slice the onions.

  4. Fry the onions in the hot fat until browned, stirring occasionally.

  5. Remove the browned onions and set them aside.

Brown the rabbit

  1. Dry the rabbit pieces with a cloth and dust them with flour.

  2. Fry the rabbit pieces in the stewpan until browned on all sides.

Make and finish the curry

  1. Mix the curry powder with a little cold water to form a smooth paste.

  2. Add the chopped apple and fried onions to the stewpan with the rabbit.

  3. Stir in the curry paste, then add ½ cup of cold water or stock and salt to taste.

  4. Mix everything together and cook until heated through.

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

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

  2. Rabbit + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together252 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Apple + ricetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,311 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Rabbit + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,292 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 the flour coating helps brown and thicken the sauce.
Butter or dripping
Carries the heat for frying the onions and rabbit and adds richness.
Onions
Browning adds sweetness and savoury depth to the sauce base.
Apple
Adds mild sweetness and body that balances the heat of the curry.
Curry powder
Supplies the spice aroma and flavour that define the dish.
Flour
Coats the rabbit so it browns well and helps thicken the sauce.

The step that matters

Mixing the curry powder into a smooth paste. Spices dispersed in cold liquid before heating avoid lumps and let flavour blend evenly. Lumps of raw curry powder stay gritty and taste harsh.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Applethe original

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