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Beef Vindaloo

A spicy beef dish marinated in vinegar and spices, then simmered until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon 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 ↓

Beef Vindaloo

Ingredients

Directions

Marinate

  1. Cut the beef into large squares and steep them in vinegar, salt, and all the ground ingredients for 18 to 24 hours.

Cook and serve

  1. Warm the ghee or lard in a pot, then add the marinated meat along with the steeping liquid, peppercorns, and bay leaves.

  2. Simmer gently on low heat for 2 hours or until the meat is tender.

  3. Serve hot.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Coriander + cumintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,866 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Cardamom + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,299 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Coriander + cardamomtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together872 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Cardamom + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,114 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the protein that becomes tender during long, gentle simmering.
Vinegar
Acidity in the marinade helps tenderise the meat and sharpens the flavour.
Ghee or lard
Fat that carries the spices and gives the sauce richness and a rounded mouthfeel.
Dried chillies
Supply heat and pungency that define the vindaloo character.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma that deepens as it cooks in the fat.
Ginger
Adds warm, fresh aroma that balances the heat of the chillies.

The step that matters

Simmer gently on low heat. Collagen in tough cuts converts to gelatin slowly at low temperatures, so a vigorous boil can leave the meat tough and stringy while gentle simmering makes it tender.

Swap the garlic

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

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ghee, ginger, coriander, cumin, cardamom, clove, cinnamon. 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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