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Rabbit Curry

A stew of rabbit pieces fried with onions, flour, curry powder, and simmered in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter 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 ↓

Rabbit Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Roll each piece of rabbit in a mixture of flour and curry powder.

Fry

  1. Slice the onions and fry them in butter until light brown.

  2. Add the rabbit pieces to the onions and fry until the meat begins to brown.

Stew and serve

  1. Transfer everything to a stewpan and pour in enough boiling water to cover the meat.

  2. Simmer gently for 2-3 hours, adding more water if the curry is too thick before serving.

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. Flour + buttertop 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. Rabbit + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together626 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter 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, which becomes tender through long, gentle simmering.
Flour
Coats the rabbit and helps thicken the sauce as it cooks.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced flavour that defines the dish.
Onions
Browning in butter builds sweetness and depth that forms the base of the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmering gently. Rabbit is lean and can turn dry or tough if boiled hard. A gentle simmer lets the connective tissue break down slowly while the meat stays moist.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Avocadofits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, flour, 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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