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To Make Curry

A meat curry made with curry powder, flour, butter, onions, lemon rind, vinegar, and beef gravy, served over rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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To Make Curry

Why it works: Beef and onion 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 ↓

To Make Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. Fry the curry powder and flour in butter until light brown.

  2. Pour in enough boiling water to make a stiff paste, then add the beef gravy.

Prepare the onions and meat

  1. Slice the onions and fry them in butter until brown.

  2. Cut the meat into small pieces and add it to a stew pan with the paste, onions, and grated lemon rind.

Stew and serve

  1. Stew until the meat is tender, then add vinegar, lemon juice, and salt.

  2. Simmer for 5 minutes and serve with 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Beef + oniontop 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. Lemon + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Meat + beeftop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,533 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Meat
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender through long, slow stewing.
Onions
Frying until brown adds sweetness and depth to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the curry paste so it clings to the meat and onions.
Curry powder
Supplies the spice and aroma that define the dish.
Beef gravy
Adds savory body and liquid to the stew.

The step that matters

Frying the curry powder and flour until light brown. Frying toasts the spices and flour, removing raw flour taste and deepening the aroma. Burning them turns the paste bitter, and undercooking leaves it tasting raw.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, flour, butter, beef, onion, vinegar, 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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