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East India Curry

A rabbit curry made with flour, butter, onions, beef gravy, curry powder, mushroom ketchup, lemon juice, potato, and apple.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,232 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

East India Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and brown

  1. Cut up the rabbit and sprinkle it with flour.

  2. Fry the rabbit in butter with the chopped onions until golden.

  3. Transfer the meat and onions to a stewpan.

Stew and serve

  1. Add the beef gravy, curry powder, mushroom ketchup, salt, butter, lemon juice, potato, and apple.

  2. Stew for 20 minutes.

  3. Serve with 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. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

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

  2. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  3. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Rabbit + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together252 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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 slow stewing.
Flour
Coats the meat, helping it brown and thickening the sauce as it cooks.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they fry, building the base flavour of the curry.
Curry powder
Supplies the spice aroma that defines the dish.
Potato
Breaks down slightly during stewing, adding body to the sauce.
Apple
Softens into the sauce, adding gentle sweetness that balances the spice.

The step that matters

Frying the rabbit until golden. Browning the floured meat in butter creates flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pale meat tastes flatter, and the browning also helps the coating form a good base for the sauce.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Raisinfits less well

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