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Plain Quorma Curry

A mutton curry made with ghee, yogurt, ground spices, onions, and lemon, simmered slowly until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Plain Quorma Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the mutton well and cut it into 1½ inch squares.

Make the curry

  1. Heat the ghee in a pot until bubbling hot, then fry the sliced onions until golden brown. Remove and set aside.

  2. Fry all the ground spices until fragrant and browned.

  3. Add the mutton and salt to the pot, frying until well browned.

  4. Stir in the yogurt, peppercorns, bay leaves, and water.

  5. Add the fried onions, chopped.

  6. Mix everything well, cover the pot, and let it simmer over low heat for 1-2 hours until the curry is ready.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  5. Coriander + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Provides the meat, which browns in the fat and becomes tender during the long simmer.
Yogurt
Adds tang and moisture, and its proteins help thicken and enrich the sauce.
Ghee
Fat that carries the spice flavours and helps the onions and meat brown.
Onions
Fried until golden and added to the sauce, giving body, sweetness and depth of flavour.

The step that matters

Frying the yogurt-free spice base and meat until well browned. Browning the spices and meat in hot fat develops deeper, roasted flavours through the Maillard reaction. Pale frying leaves the curry tasting flat and raw-spiced.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ghee, yogurt, coriander, cinnamon, ginger, garlic, clove):

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ghee, yogurt, coriander, cinnamon, ginger, garlic, clove. 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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