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Curried Rabbit

A rabbit dish cooked with onions, apple, curry powder, and butter, served over boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,433 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Curried Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Empty and wash the rabbit thoroughly, then dry it completely.

  2. Cut the rabbit into small joints.

Make the curry

  1. In a small stew-pan, heat the butter until hot.

  2. Peel and chop the onions, then fry them until pale brown.

  3. Add the rabbit pieces and fry them on all sides.

  4. Peel and chop the apple, then add it to the pan.

  5. Stir in the curry powder and salt, mixing well with the meat.

  6. Add the water and stew for one hour.

Serve

  1. Serve with a border of 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. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Apple + ricetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,311 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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 during the long stewing.
Onions
Frying them until pale brown builds sweetness and a savoury base for the sauce.
Butter
Carries the heat for frying and adds richness to the sauce.
Apple
Adds mild sweetness and body that softens into the stewed sauce.
Curry powder
Supplies the spice aroma that defines the dish's flavour.

The step that matters

Frying the rabbit on all sides. Searing the meat builds browned flavour through the Maillard reaction. If the pieces are crowded or wet, they steam instead of browning, and the sauce tastes flatter. Drying the rabbit first helps it sear.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Mangofits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Applethe original

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