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India Curry and Rice

A lamb curry with banana and apple served over rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Banana and apple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 435 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

India Curry and Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Brown and fry

  1. Brown the onions and lamb chops in a frying pan.

  2. Slice the banana and apple, then fry them with the lamb and onions.

  3. Add the curry powder and lemon juice, and fry for about 15 minutes.

Simmer and finish

  1. Transfer to a saucepan, cover with water, and cook slowly for 1.5 hours.

  2. Season with pepper and salt to taste.

  3. Thicken the curry with cornstarch before serving.

Serve

  1. Boil rice in salted water for about 30 minutes, drain, and arrange around the platter with the curry in the center.

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. Banana + appletop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together435 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Lamb + ricetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together439 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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

Lamb chops
Provides the meat that becomes tender during long, slow simmering.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they brown, building the base flavour of the curry.
Curry powder
Supplies the spice blend that gives the curry its characteristic aroma and flavour.
Banana
Breaks down during cooking, adding body and gentle sweetness to the sauce.
Apple
Softens into the sauce, adding body and mild sweetness that balances the spice.
Cornstarch (in the method)
Thickens the cooking liquid into a glossy sauce that clings to the meat.

The step that matters

Simmering the lamb slowly. Cooking gently over a long period lets the connective tissue in the shoulder break down into gelatin, making the meat tender. A hard boil toughens the muscle fibres and can leave the sauce cloudy or reduced too quickly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, banana, apple, pepper, lemon, rice):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, banana, apple, pepper, lemon, 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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