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Curried Rabbit

A stew of rabbit, onions, apple, and curry simmered in butter and stock, finished with lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Curried Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sauce

  1. Melt butter in a stewpan and fry sliced onions and apple until soft.

  2. Boil stock and pour into the stewpan with onions and apple.

  3. Mix flour and curry powder with a little stock to form a paste, then add to stewpan.

  4. Simmer mixture for 30 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Add rabbit pieces and warm thoroughly.

  2. Squeeze lemon juice before serving.

  3. Serve with 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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Rabbit + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,292 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Rabbit + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  4. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

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

  5. Butter + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 warms through in the curry sauce.
Butter
Carries the onions and apple as they soften, adding richness to the sauce.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they fry, forming the base flavour of the curry.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce that clings to the rabbit.
Curry powder
Supplies the spice and aroma that define the dish.
Sour apple
Adds acidity and fruitiness that balance the richness of the sauce.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour and curry powder into a paste. Stirring the flour and curry powder into a smooth paste with a little stock before adding it prevents lumps. Dry flour clumps when it meets hot liquid, and the paste lets the spices disperse evenly through the sauce.

Swap the apple

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

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

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