Name: Curry of Cold Roast Beef
Ingredients: cold roast beef, cut into small pieces; flour, for dredging; 1 small onion, sliced; 1 heaping tablespoon butter; a little gravy; 1 tablespoon curry powder; cooked rice, for serving

Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Curry of Cold Roast Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Dredge the pieces of cold roast beef in flour.
In a pan, fry the sliced onion in butter until light brown.

Make the curry

Pour in a little gravy and add the curry powder and meat.
Cook on a brisk fire, stirring well for 10 minutes.

Serve

Serve with a border of rice around the dish.

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.

Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,092 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,433 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Beef + ricetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,265 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together42,912 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Cold roast beef: Provides the main protein; flour coating helps it brown and thickens the sauce slightly.
Butter: Fat that carries the curry flavour and helps the onion brown.
Onion: Sweetens and builds the base flavour as it browns in butter.
Curry powder: Supplies the spice aroma that defines the dish.
Gravy: Adds liquid and savoury body, letting the meat simmer in a sauce.

The step that matters

Cook on a brisk fire, stirring well. The meat is already cooked, so the goal is to heat it through and bloom the curry powder without scorching the flour-dusted pieces. Stirring keeps the sauce from sticking and burning on the base of the pan.

Swap the onion

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

Leekfits better
Potatofits better
Chivefits about as well
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, flour, butter, 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.

Roast Beef211 recipes

Beef Loaf175 recipes

Corned Beef87 recipes

Rice Fritters84 recipes

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Curry of Cold Roast Beef