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Curry of Mutton

A mutton curry served with rice, finished by baking with an egg glaze.

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

Curry of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the rice

  1. Wash the rice and add it to boiling water. Boil for 35 minutes, then drain in a colander.

Make the curry

  1. In a frying pan, melt the butter. Add the flour and stir until smooth.

  2. Add ½ pint of boiling water to the flour mixture and let it boil once.

  3. Stir in the mutton, curry powder, and salt. Cook for 10 minutes.

Plate and brown

  1. Heap the curry in the center of a meat dish and arrange the rice around it.

  2. Brush the dish with the beaten egg and place it in the oven to brown.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

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

  4. Rice + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mutton + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,781 recipes

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

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

Mutton
Provides the main protein and body of the curry as it cooks in the sauce.
Rice
Forms the starchy base that absorbs flavour and rounds out the curried meat.
Flour
Thickens the boiling liquid into a smooth, stable sauce when cooked with butter.
Butter
Carries the curry powder's aroma and adds richness when melted with the flour.
Beaten egg
Gives the surface a glossy sheen and helps it take on colour in the oven.

The step that matters

Making the flour and butter base smooth. Stirring flour into melted butter before adding liquid cooks out raw flour taste and prevents lumps. Adding the liquid too quickly, or without stirring, leaves clumps that do not blend back into the sauce.

“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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