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Veal Curry

A veal curry with onion, apple, coconut, and curry powder simmered in butter and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and coconut are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,467 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Veal Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curry base

  1. Melt the butter in a pan, then add the onion and apple. Fry until the onion is light brown.

  2. Stir in the curry powder and flour, mixing off the heat until smooth. Cook for 2-3 minutes.

  3. Add the water and salt to the mixture and bring to a boil.

Simmer and serve

  1. Add the veal and coconut, then reduce heat and simmer for 1.5 hours.

  2. Stir in the lemon juice before serving with boiled 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.

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 + coconuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Apple + coconuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together274 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylethanol (rose, floral).

  4. Onion + coconuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,831 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Lemon + coconuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Veal
Provides the meat, which becomes tender during the long, gentle simmer.
Flour
Thickens the curry sauce as it cooks with the liquid.
Curry powder
Supplies the main spiced aroma and flavour of the dish.
Onion
Builds a sweet, savoury base when fried until light brown.
Desiccated coconut
Adds richness and a subtly sweet, nutty flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Cooking the curry powder and flour off the heat. Stirring the spices and flour off the heat keeps the flour from lumping, so the sauce becomes smooth. Cooking the curry powder briefly in fat helps bloom its aroma before liquid is added.

Swap the apple

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

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

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