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Curried Rabbit

A rabbit stew flavored with curry, apples, onions, and stock, served over boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Curried Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Wash the rabbit.

  2. Dry the rabbit.

  3. Cut the rabbit into neat joints.

Brown and build the sauce

  1. Heat the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Fry the rabbit until lightly browned.

  3. Remove the rabbit from the pan.

  4. Add the sliced apple and onion to the pan and fry for five minutes.

  5. Stir in the curry powder and fry for another five minutes.

  6. Add the flour, pepper, and salt to the pan.

  7. Add the stock and bring to a boil.

  8. Return the rabbit to the pan.

Simmer and serve

  1. Let the mixture simmer for two hours.

  2. Add the juice of half a lemon.

  3. Serve the rabbit in the center of a dish, with gravy strained over it and boiled rice on the side.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

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

  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 main meat, which becomes tender during the long simmer.
Butter
Fat for frying that carries the curry flavour and helps the rabbit brown.
Apple
Adds sweetness that softens the heat of the curry.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it fries, forming the base of the sauce.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced aroma that defines the dish, bloomed in fat before liquid is added.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a gravy as it cooks.

The step that matters

Stir in the curry powder and fry for another five minutes. Frying spices in fat before adding liquid releases their fat-soluble aromas and reduces raw, dusty flavour. Stopping early leaves the sauce tasting flat.

Swap the apple

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

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

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