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Curried Meat

A dish of thinly sliced or diced cold meat simmered in a butter, onion, flour, curry powder, lemon juice, and hot water sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Curried Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a chafing dish.

  2. Add the sliced onion and cook until browned.

  3. Mix the flour with a little cold water and add to the dish. Stir in the curry powder, lemon juice, and hot water.

  4. Let simmer for 5 minutes, stirring constantly.

Add the meat

  1. Add the thinly sliced or diced cold meat and cook for 10 minutes before serving.

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. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Butter + meattop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Onion + meattop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,364 recipes

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

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

Butter
Adds richness and carries the curry flavour through the onion.
Onion
Browning builds sweet, savoury depth as the onion cooks in the butter.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce that coats the meat.
Curry powder
Provides the spiced aroma and flavour that defines the dish.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, spiced sauce.
Cold meat
Forms the body of the dish, warmed through in the sauce.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour into the liquid. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps, so it should be blended smoothly with cold water first. Stirring constantly during simmering keeps the sauce smooth and prevents scorching on the bottom of the dish.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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