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Mutton, Curried, Plain

A simple mutton curry made with butter, onions, curry powder, flour, stock, and served with rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,433 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Mutton, Curried, Plain

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curry base

  1. In a stewpan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the chopped onions and stir until they are pale brown.

  3. Mix in the curry powder, flour, and salt; stir for 5 minutes.

  4. Moisten the mixture with the stock and simmer for a few minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the cooked mutton and simmer until heated through, avoiding boiling.

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

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + ricetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Flour + ricetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Fats the pan and carries the curry spices, adding richness to the sauce.
Onions
Soften and brown, adding sweetness and depth to the base.
Curry powder
Provides the main spice flavour and aroma of the dish.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth, body-rich sauce.
Stock
Moistens the roux-like mixture and forms the liquid of the sauce.
Mutton
Provides the meat, which is gently reheated in the sauce to stay tender.

The step that matters

Add the cooked mutton and simmer until heated through, avoiding boiling.. Mutton is already cooked, so it only needs gentle reheating. Boiling toughens cooked meat proteins and can make the meat dry and stringy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, mutton, 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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