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Rabbit, Curried

A rabbit stew flavored with curry, flour, and mushroom powder, served over 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 ↓

Rabbit, Curried

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Empty, skin, and wash the rabbit thoroughly.

  2. Cut the rabbit into joints.

Make the curry

  1. In a pan, melt the butter and sauté the onions until soft.

  2. Add the rabbit joints and brown them on all sides.

  3. Stir in the curry powder, flour, and mushroom powder.

  4. Pour in the stock and bring to a simmer.

  5. Cook until the rabbit is tender, about 1 hour.

Serve

  1. Meanwhile, cook the rice according to package instructions.

  2. Serve the curried rabbit with rice and drizzle with lemon juice.

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
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long simmering in the liquid.
Butter
Adds fat for sautéing the onions and browning the rabbit, carrying flavour.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook, forming the savoury base of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a sauce as it cooks with the curry powder.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced aroma and flavour that defines the dish.
Stock
Provides the cooking liquid that tenderises the rabbit and forms the sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the rabbit joints. Searing the joints over direct heat creates browned surfaces through the Maillard reaction, adding depth of flavour that a simmer alone will not give. Dry joints brown best, so pat them dry first.

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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