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Sheep's Brain Curry

A curry made with sheep brains, ghee, onions, coconut milk, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and coconut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,831 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Sheep's Brain Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Wash and clean the brains and set aside.

  2. Warm the ghee in a pan and fry the onions until light brown.

  3. Add the currystuffs and fry together with the onions.

Make the coconut milk

  1. Prepare coconut milk by mixing the grated coconut with 1 cup of thin milk and simmer for a while, then add salt.

Cook the brains

  1. Drop the cleaned brains into the pan and cook over low heat until grease appears on the surface.

  2. Just before removing from heat, add ½ cup of thick coconut milk.

  3. Avoid stirring with a spoon to keep the brains whole.

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

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

  2. Ghee + coconuttop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together180 recipes
  3. Ghee + oniontop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,310 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Sheep brains
The main ingredient, whose soft, delicate texture forms the body of the curry.
Ghee
Provides fat that carries the spice flavours and helps the onions brown.
Onion
Frying until light brown adds sweetness and depth to the curry base.
Fresh coconut
Adds creaminess, richness and mild sweetness to the sauce.
Currystuffs
Release aroma and spice flavour when fried with the onions in fat.

The step that matters

Cooking the brains over low heat without stirring. Brains are soft and break apart easily. Gentle low heat cooks them evenly without toughening, and avoiding a spoon keeps the pieces whole.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ghee, coconut):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ghee, 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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