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Curried Rabbit

A stew of rabbit, onions, apple, and curry simmered with butter and stock.

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

Cook the sauce

  1. Slice and fry the onions and apple in the butter.

  2. Boil the stock and pour it into the stewpan.

  3. Mix the flour and curry powder with a little of the stock.

  4. Simmer for 30 minutes.

Add the rabbit and serve

  1. Add the cut-up rabbit and warm thoroughly.

  2. Squeeze in the lemon juice and 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
Provides the main protein and the substance of the dish.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and carries the flavour of the frying onions and apple.
Onions
Browning in the fat builds sweetness and a savoury aroma base for the sauce.
Apple
Its sweetness and tartness balance the heat and bitterness of the curry powder.
Curry powder
Supplies the warm, aromatic spice character that defines the dish.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth, body-giving sauce.

The step that matters

Mix the flour and curry powder with a little stock. Flour clumps when it meets hot liquid unless it is first dispersed in cold or cool liquid. Blending it smooth before it goes into the pot helps the sauce thicken evenly instead of forming lumps.

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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