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Simple Curry

A curry made with meat, apple, onion, flour, curry powder, butter, gravy, lemon juice, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter 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 ↓

Simple Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the onion and chop the apple.

  2. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

Make the sauce

  1. Add the onion and apple; fry until nicely browned.

  2. Sprinkle in the flour, then the curry powder, and stir in the gravy.

  3. Bring to a boil, then cut the meat into ½ inch squares and add it to the saucepan.

Simmer and finish

  1. Simmer quietly for 2 hours, then flavor with lemon juice and salt.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

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

  3. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

Flour and butter 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

Meat
Provides the main protein; slow simmering makes it tender and rich.
Onion
Browning adds sweetness and depth to the base of the curry.
Cooking apple
Adds mild sweetness and body that balances the curry spices.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so the curry becomes a cohesive sauce.
Curry powder
Supplies the aromatic spices that define the dish's flavor.

The step that matters

Fry the onion and apple until nicely browned. Browning caramelizes the natural sugars and builds deep flavor. Pale, undercooked onion tastes raw and flat, and that flavor carries into the finished curry.

Swap the apple

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

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

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