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Curried Beef

A simple beef curry with onion, apple, and curry powder served over boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Curried Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curry

  1. In a saucepan, sauté the chopped onion and apple for 2-3 minutes.

  2. Add the sliced beef and cook for a few minutes.

  3. Stir the curry powder into the water and pour it over the beef.

  4. Simmer for 10 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve with boiled rice in a separate dish.

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. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  2. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Beef + ricetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,265 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  4. Apple + ricetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,311 recipes

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

  5. Onion + appletop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,206 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Onion
Softens as it sautés, adding sweetness and a savoury base to the sauce.
Baking apple
Breaks down slightly as it cooks, adding sweetness and body that balances the curry powder.
Cold roast or boiled beef
Provides the main protein; it is already cooked, so it only needs to warm through in the sauce.
Curry powder
Supplies the spice blend that gives the dish its characteristic aroma and flavour.

The step that matters

Stirring the curry powder into the water. Curry powder that is stirred into liquid rather than dropped into hot fat is less likely to scorch and taste bitter, and dissolving it evenly keeps the flavour spread through the sauce.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, beef, rice):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, beef, rice. 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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