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Curried Potatoes

A curry-flavored potato dish served with rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Curried Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the cold boiled potatoes into cubes.

  2. Slice the onion and fry it in butter in a frying pan.

  3. Add the curry powder and stir well.

Cook and serve

  1. Add the potatoes, season with salt, and moisten with stock and lemon juice.

  2. Shake the pan over the heat and stew for about 15 minutes.

  3. Serve in a border of plainly cooked rice.

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. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Potato + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together851 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Lemon + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Potato + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Form the bulk of the dish and soak up the sauce as they stew.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it fries in butter, forming the base flavour.
Butter
Carries the curry powder and adds richness while frying the onion.
Curry powder
Provides the spiced aroma and colour that defines the dish.
Stock
Moistens the pan so the potatoes stew into a saucy coating.
Lemon juice
Adds a bright acidity that balances the richness of the butter and spices.

The step that matters

Stirring the curry powder into the butter and onion. Curry powder contains fat-soluble aromatic compounds that bloom when briefly fried in butter. Adding it to a dry or overly hot pan can scorch it, giving a bitter taste.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, onion, butter, rice):

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Mangofits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, onion, butter, rice. 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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