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Cape Curry

A stew of meat cooked with curry powder, cloves, butter, tamarinds, onions, apples, stock, and thickened with cornflour, served over rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Cape Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the curry

  1. In a large pot, combine the uncooked meat, stock or gravy, curry powder, cloves, butter, tamarinds, fried onions, chopped apples, salt, and pepper.

  2. Cook slowly until the butter separates, then remove the excess butter, leaving a jelly-like consistency.

  3. In a separate pan, fry the onions and curry powder together for 20 minutes.

Stew and finish

  1. Add the remaining ingredients, including the stock, and stew for one hour.

  2. Stir in the cold, cut-up meat, a little cream, and cornflour to thicken.

  3. Serve with plain boiled rice.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Clove + tamarindtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together145 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + appletop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Tamarind + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together207 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Tamarind + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together426 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Carries the curry spices and gives richness, and is skimmed off to leave a thicker sauce.
Curry powder
Supplies the main spice flavour and aroma that defines the dish.
Apples
Their tartness balances the richness and spices, adding acidity to the sauce.
Tamarinds
Add a sour, acidic note that balances the sweetness and heat of the spices.
Cornflour
Thickens the sauce as it heats, giving it body.

The step that matters

Removing the excess butter. If too much butter is left in, the sauce stays greasy and separated. Skimming it off once it has split lets the sauce settle into a smooth, jelly-like consistency.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, clove, butter, tamarind, onion, pepper, flour):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Mangofits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, clove, butter, tamarind, onion, pepper, 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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