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Field-rabbit with Curry

A stew of rabbit pieces fried with bacon, seasoned with curry powder, and finished with a sauce thickened by egg yolks and cream.

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 ↓

Field-rabbit with Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the rabbit

  1. Melt butter in a stewpan.

  2. Fry rabbit pieces with bacon over moderate heat until lightly colored.

  3. Season the mixture with salt.

  4. Dust with flour and curry powder. Fry for a few more seconds.

  5. Moisten with broth. Return to heat.

  6. Stir until boiling.

Simmer and finish

  1. After 5 minutes, reduce heat to finish cooking the rabbit.

  2. Ten minutes before serving, transfer rabbit to another stewpan.

  3. Pour sauce over it.

  4. Add onions seasoned and colored with butter.

  5. Thicken sauce with egg yolks diluted in cream without boiling.

  6. Serve the rabbit with boiled 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Rabbit + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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 meat, which becomes tender as it simmers in the sauce.
Streaky bacon
Renders fat that browns the rabbit and adds savory flavor to the sauce.
Flour
Dusted on the browned pieces, it thickens the sauce as it cooks in the broth.
Curry powder
Adds the spiced aroma that defines the dish, bloomed briefly in the hot fat.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce gently when diluted in cream and kept below boiling.
Onions
Add sweetness and body to the sauce as they soften and brown in butter.

The step that matters

Thickening with egg yolks and cream. If the sauce boils after the egg yolks go in, the proteins scramble and the sauce turns grainy. Keep it just below boiling and stir constantly so it thickens smoothly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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