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Curried Rabbit

A rabbit dish cooked with onions, butter, apple, and curry powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Rabbit and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,292 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Curried Rabbit

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the rabbit thoroughly, then dry it and cut it into small pieces.

  2. Heat the butter in a small saucepan until hot.

Cook

  1. Peel and chop the onions, then fry them in the hot butter until golden.

  2. Add the rabbit pieces to the pan and cook until browned.

  3. Stir in the chopped apple, curry powder, and salt, and cook until the rabbit is tender.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  3. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Rabbit + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,448 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Onion + appletop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,206 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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, which becomes tender as it cooks slowly in the pan.
Onions
Fried until golden, they add sweetness and savory depth to the curry base.
Butter
Carries the heat for frying and adds richness and flavor to the onions and meat.
Apple
Adds mild sweetness and acidity that balances the warm spice of the curry powder.

The step that matters

Browning the rabbit pieces. Searing the meat until browned builds flavor through the Maillard reaction. Crowding the pan or adding meat to cool fat causes steaming, which leaves it pale and less flavorful.

Swap the apple

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

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

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