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Rice and Indian Curry

A curry of meat and onions simmered in a spiced milk sauce, served over rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Rice and Indian Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice

  1. Wash the rice in two or three waters, then drain it.

  2. Place the rice in a pot with plenty of cold water and bring it to a boil uncovered.

  3. Boil gently for about 15 minutes until tender but distinct, then drain and dry on a sieve.

Prepare the curry

  1. Cut the meat into serving pieces and slice the onions.

  2. Fry the onions in butter until lightly browned, then remove them.

  3. In the same fat, fry the meat, stirring to prevent burning.

  4. Mix the curry paste, curry powder, and ground rice with the milk until smooth.

  5. Pour the mixture over the meat, add stock, fried onions, salt, and garlic if using.

  6. Stir until boiling, then simmer until the meat is tender.

Serve

  1. Transfer the meat to a dish, remove the onions, and stir in lemon juice.

  2. Pour the sauce over the meat and serve with the rice on a separate 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 + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  4. Garlic + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,893 recipes

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

  5. Rice + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 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

Patna rice
Cooks up tender but distinct, giving a light base that holds its grains apart.
Onions
Browned in butter first, they add sweetness and savoury depth to the sauce.
Curry powder
Blooms in the fat and milk, supplying the main spiced flavour of the sauce.
Ground rice
Mixed with the milk, it thickens the sauce so it clings to the meat.
Milk
Makes the sauce creamy and mellows the sharpness of the spices.
Stock
Adds savoury body to the sauce as the meat simmers.

The step that matters

Mix the curry paste, powder and ground rice with the milk until smooth. Whisking the starch and spices into the milk before adding it to the hot pan prevents lumps, so the thickened sauce stays smooth rather than grainy.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Clovethe original

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