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Rabbit Curry

A curry of rabbit pieces simmered with onions, sour apple or gooseberries, stock, curry paste, and cream, served over boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Rabbit Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Fry the rabbit

  1. Fry the pieces of rabbit in the same fat for about 10 minutes until evenly cooked.

  2. Drain the fried rabbit pieces.

Make the sauce

  1. In a stewpan, combine fried onions, chopped sour apple (or gooseberries), and stock.

  2. In a bowl, mix curry paste, curry powder, salt, and ground rice with a little stock to form a smooth paste.

  3. Stir the paste into the sauce and simmer until the onions are soft.

  4. Rub the sauce through a fine sieve back into the stewpan.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the rabbit pieces and simmer gently for 2 hours.

  2. Stir in the cream and adjust acidity with lemon juice if needed.

  3. Serve with boiled rice around the dish.

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. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Rabbit + creamtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together409 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit
Is the main protein, becoming tender through long, gentle simmering.
Sour apple or gooseberries
Adds acidity and fruity sharpness that balances the rich curry sauce.
Ground rice
Thickens the sauce, giving it body as it cooks.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, mellow texture to the finished sauce.
Curry paste and curry powder
Provide the core spiced flavour of the curry.

The step that matters

Simmering the sauce through the sieve and then the rabbit. Rubbing the sauce through a fine sieve smooths out the onions and apple so the sauce is silky, and a gentle simmer keeps the rabbit tender rather than tough or stringy.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, onion, rice, cream, lemon. 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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