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Dal Pooree

A flatbread filled with spiced dal, rolled and fried until light yellow.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Turmeric and cumin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,698 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Dal Pooree

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Mix the flour with a little water and salt to form a stiff dough.

  2. Knead the dough well and set aside.

Make the dal filling

  1. Boil the dal with the ground turmeric and cumin until soft.

  2. Grind the boiled dal to a paste, adding just enough water to cover the dal.

Shape and fry

  1. Take two pieces of the prepared dough, each the size of an apple, and shape them into bowls.

  2. Place a walnut-sized amount of dal paste in one bowl, cover with the other, and roll out carefully to the size of a cheese plate.

  3. Fry in ghee until light yellow. The thinner and lighter, the better.

  4. 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. Turmeric + cumintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,698 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Flour + turmerictop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,637 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Wheat + cumintop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together153 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Wheat + turmerictop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together92 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Flour + cumintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,286 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Wheat flour
Forms the stiff dough that wraps and holds the filling, becoming crisp when fried.
Gram or mussoor dal
Forms the soft, thick paste filling that gives the pooree its body and flavour.
Ghee
Fries the pooree, giving a golden colour and rich flavour as the dough puffs and crisps.

The step that matters

Rolling the stuffed dough thin. Rolling the dough thinly around the filling lets it cook through and crisp evenly in hot fat. Thick or uneven dough stays doughy in the centre and can burn outside.

Swap the cumin

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

  1. Cardamomfits about as well
  2. Cuminthe original
  3. Cinnamonfits less well
  4. Gingerfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against wheat, flour, turmeric, ghee. 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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