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Curry of Fowls or Rabbits

A curry of fowls or rabbits simmered with onions, broth, curry powder, and finished with cream or milk, served over rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Curry of Fowls or Rabbits

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curry

  1. Melt the butter in a stew-pan over medium heat.

  2. Add the meat and sliced onions.

  3. Cook until light brown.

  4. Pour in the broth and let it simmer for 20 minutes.

  5. In a bowl, mix curry powder, flour, and salt with a little cold water until smooth.

  6. Add the mixture to the stew-pan.

  7. Stir until it boils.

  8. Simmer for another 20 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the meat and strain the sauce through a sieve.

  2. Stir in the cream or milk and bring to a boil.

  3. Serve the sauce with the meat on top and 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Rabbit + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together252 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Rabbit + creamtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together409 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

Fowls or rabbits
Provides the meat, which becomes tender as it simmers in the sauce.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook, adding body to the sauce.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced, aromatic flavour that defines the dish.
Flour
Thickens the broth into a smooth sauce.
Cream or milk
Adds richness and mellows the sauce at the end.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and curry paste mixture. Mixing the curry powder and flour with cold water first keeps lumps from forming. Stirring until it boils then thickens the sauce evenly as starch swells.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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