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Babbit, Curried

Curried rabbit served over boiled 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 ↓

Babbit, Curried

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

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

  2. In a stew pan, melt the butter and add the sliced onions; cook until they are nicely browned but not blackened.

Make the curry

  1. Pour in the boiling stock.

  2. Mix the curry powder and flour with a little water, then add to the stock along with the mushroom powder.

  3. Simmer gently for about 30 minutes.

  4. Squeeze in the lemon juice and serve the curry in the center of a dish, surrounded by boiled rice.

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
Is the main protein, becoming tender as it simmers in the curry sauce.
Onions
Browning in butter builds sweetness and savoury depth into the curry base.
Flour
Thickens the stock so the curry sauce becomes body-rich rather than watery.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced aroma and flavour that define the dish.
Butter
Carries the onions as they brown, adding richness and flavour.
Rice
Serves as the starchy base that soaks up the sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the onions. Onions should turn nicely brown but not blacken. Browning develops sweet, savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction, while burnt onions turn bitter and can spoil the whole curry.

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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