Name: Hussanee Curry of Beef or Mutton
Ingredients: 2 pounds beef or mutton, cut into small squares; 2 large onions, sliced; 2 pieces green ginger, sliced; 12 cloves garlic; ⅓ cup ghee; ground curry spices (as per recipe No. 26); ½ cup yogurt; coarse sea salt, to taste; water, as needed

Why it works: Ginger and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Hussanee Curry of Beef or Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Wash the meat in water and thread it onto skewers, alternating with slices of onion, ginger, and garlic.

Cook the curry

Heat the ghee in a pot and fry the sliced onions until brown.
Add the ground curry spices and fry together well.
Place the skewers in the pot and continue frying, stirring everything together.
Add the yogurt, some water, and salt to taste.
Simmer on low heat for about 45 minutes until the curry is ready.

Serve

Serve in a curry dish without removing the skewers.

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.

Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,038 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together29,058 recipes

Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).
Ginger + garlictop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,402 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,595 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

Beef or mutton: Its protein firms as it cooks, giving the skewered pieces a chewy, meaty bite.
Onions: Browning in ghee builds sweetness and savoury depth into the curry base.
Ghee: Carries the spices and browns the onions, adding richness and fat to the sauce.
Yogurt: Adds tang and moisture, and its mild acidity helps soften the meat.
Garlic: Adds pungent aroma that mellows during frying and simmering.

The step that matters

Browning the onions in ghee. Browning builds the dark, sweet base of the curry. Onions that stay pale give a flat taste, because the sugars and savoury compounds formed during browning add depth to the sauce.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, onion, ginger, garlic, ghee, yogurt):

Cuminfits better
Turmericfits better
Corianderfits better
Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, onion, ginger, garlic, ghee, yogurt. 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

Beef Broth67 recipes

Like knowing why a recipe works?

The free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.

Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.

Hussanee Curry of Beef or Mutton