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Curried Rabbit

A rabbit stew flavored with curry powder, salt pork, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Rabbit and pork work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 832 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Curried Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the salt pork into pieces.

  2. Render the fat in a skillet.

  3. Dice the onion.

Brown and build the sauce

  1. Add the onion to the skillet and cook until it turns yellow.

  2. Transfer the onion to a deep saucepan.

  3. Sear the rabbit in the skillet with the pork fat.

  4. Place the rabbit in the saucepan with the onion.

  5. Mix the curry powder and flour together in the skillet. Stir until smooth.

  6. Add the boiling water to the mixture.

  7. Pour the mixture over the rabbit until covered.

Simmer and serve

  1. Simmer for 40 to 60 minutes.

  2. Season to taste.

  3. Serve hot on a warm platter with mashed potatoes or rice, garnished with parsley.

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 + porktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together832 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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
Main protein; searing and slow simmering make it tender and flavorful.
Flour
Thickens the curry sauce as it cooks with the liquid.
Curry powder
Provides the main spiced aroma and flavor of the sauce.
Salt pork
Its rendered fat carries flavor for searing the rabbit and cooking the onion.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it cooks, adding body to the sauce.

The step that matters

Sear the rabbit in the pork fat. Browning the rabbit before simmering creates deeper flavor through the Maillard reaction. If the pieces are crowded or the pan is not hot enough, they steam and turn grey instead of browning.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

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