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Curry Kebobbed

A skewered meat dish simmered in a curry-flavored gravy with onions and pickles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,172 recipes. Both carry 1-butyl acetate, which smells fruity, banana. The science ↓

Curry Kebobbed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Cut chicken and tongue, or veal and ham, into small bits.

  2. Season the meat with minced eschalot.

  3. Thread the seasoned meat onto small skewers in alternate slices.

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, mix flour, butter, curry powder (or paste), and turmeric.

  2. Gradually add the pint of gravy to the mixture.

  3. Fry the meat with chopped onions in butter until browned.

  4. Transfer the meat and onions to a stew-pan with the gravy.

  5. Add mushroom powder, sherry, lemon pickle, garlic or tarragon vinegar, soy sauce, walnut pickle, claret or port, and cayenne vinegar.

  6. Stew until the flavor is well developed.

Serve

  1. Garnish with pickles 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. Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

  2. Flour + turmerictop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,637 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mushroom + sherrytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,176 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol (smoky, clove).

  4. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the gravy into a smooth, cohesive sauce when combined with butter.
Butter
Carries the curry flavors and helps brown the meat and onions.
Gravy
Provides the liquid base that the meat and onions simmer in.
Onions
Add sweetness and body to the sauce as they soften and brown.
Curry powder
Supplies the main spiced aroma and warm flavor of the dish.

The step that matters

Fry the meat with onions until browned. Browning through the Maillard reaction builds deep savory flavor that the later stewing cannot fully replace. Meat fried too pale or crowded in the pan will steam and taste flat.

Swap the turmeric

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, veal, flour, butter, onion, mushroom, sherry):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Turmericthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, veal, flour, butter, onion, mushroom, sherry. 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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