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To Make Curry Powder for Soups

A homemade blend of pepper, turmeric, coriander, cayenne, cardamom, cinnamon, and cumin seeds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Turmeric and cumin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,698 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

To Make Curry Powder for Soups

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix all the ingredients together.

  2. Grind them into a fine powder, or have it done at a druggist's.

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. Turmeric + cumintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,698 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Coriander + cumintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,866 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Turmeric + cardamomtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together667 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Cardamom + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,299 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Coriander + cardamomtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together872 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Turmeric
Gives the powder its yellow colour and an earthy, slightly bitter flavour.
Coriander seed
Provides the warm, citrusy base flavour that most of the blend is built on.
Cinnamon
Adds sweet, woody aroma that rounds out the warm spice profile.
Black pepper
Contributes sharp heat and a pungent aroma that lifts the other spices.
Cayenne pepper
Adds direct chilli heat that gives the blend its bite.
Cumin seed
Adds a warm, earthy, nutty aroma typical of curry blends.

The step that matters

Grind to a fine powder. Whole spices release flavour slowly and unevenly, while a fine powder disperses evenly and releases aroma quickly when cooked. Uneven grinding leaves gritty pockets of flavour and a less consistent blend.

Swap the cinnamon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, turmeric, coriander, cardamom, cumin):

  1. Saffronfits better
  2. Gingerfits about as well
  3. Fennelfits about as well
  4. Cinnamonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, turmeric, coriander, cardamom, cumin. 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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