Skip to main content
Main

Rabbit Curry

A slow‑cooked rabbit dish flavored with curry powder, coconut, raisins, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Coconut and raisin work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 183 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Rabbit Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In an earthen crock, place a thin slice of bacon.

  2. Add a layer of rabbit pieces and sprinkle with curry powder, salt, grated coconut, and raisins.

  3. Repeat layering until all rabbit is used, seasoning each layer.

  4. Moisten the mixture with wine and let it stand for 24 hours.

Cook and serve

  1. Place the crock in a pot of water and simmer for 2 hours, keeping it covered.

  2. Serve on a flat dish with 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. Coconut + raisintop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together183 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Rabbit + coconuttop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Rabbit + raisintop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Raisin + winetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Coconut + winetop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together159 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Rabbits
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender during the long, gentle simmer.
Bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor that carries into the meat and sauce.
Fresh grated coconut
Adds moisture, body and a subtle sweetness to the curry.
Catawba or rhine wine
Moistens the mixture and adds acidity that helps build flavor during the resting period.
Raisins
Add sweetness and soft, juicy bursts of flavor against the curry spice.

The step that matters

Keeping the crock covered while simmering. Covering the crock traps steam and moisture, so the rabbit cooks gently and stays juicy rather than drying out. Gentle heat in a water bath also prevents the meat from toughening.

Swap the coconut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, raisin, wine):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Currantfits better
  4. Coconutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, raisin, wine. 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.

More rabbit curry recipes

Soup 13 See all 35 →

You might also like

Rabbit PattiesRabbit Patties6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes