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Curry, Madras

A curry made with onions, butter, curry powder, curry paste, ground rice, salt, gravy and meat, served with rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and coconut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,063 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Curry, Madras

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curry

  1. Fry the sliced onions in butter until lightly browned.

  2. Mix curry powder, curry paste, and ground rice with the butter.

  3. Add coarse sea salt and gravy to the mixture.

  4. Add the meat pieces and simmer gently for 40 minutes, stirring every few minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve the curry with a border of rice around the dish.

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. Rice + coconuttop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,063 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  3. Butter + coconuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  5. Rice + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,481 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Carries the curry spices and browns the onions, adding richness and flavour.
Onion
Softens and browns as it cooks, adding sweetness and body to the sauce.
Curry powder
Provides the main spiced aroma and flavour of the dish.
Ground rice
Thickens the sauce slightly as it cooks with the butter and spices.
Gravy
Forms the liquid base that the meat simmers in.
Meat
Becomes tender through gentle simmering, providing the main protein of the dish.

The step that matters

Simmer the meat gently. Simmering slowly rather than boiling keeps the meat tender and prevents the sauce from reducing or sticking too quickly. Stirring every few minutes helps prevent scorching on the base of the pan.

Swap the coconut

The recipe marks coconut as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, butter, rice, meat):

  1. Coconutthe original
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Grapefits less well
  4. Mangofits less well

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