Name: Veal Curry, Made with Cold Cooked Veal
Ingredients: 2 pounds cold cooked veal, cut into ¼ inch thick pieces; 4 onions, sliced; 1 apple, sliced; 2 tablespoons fat (for frying); 1 tablespoon curry paste or curry powder; 1 tablespoon ground rice; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; 1 cup stock or water

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 ↓

Veal Curry, Made with Cold Cooked Veal

Ingredients

2 pounds cold cooked veal, cut into ¼ inch thick pieces
4 onions, sliced
1 apple, sliced
2 tablespoons fat (for frying)
1 tablespoon curry paste or curry powder
1 tablespoon ground rice
¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt
1 cup stock or water

Directions

Make the sauce

Fry the sliced onions and apple in fat until soft.
Pass the mixture through a sieve and mix with curry paste, ground rice, salt, and stock or water.
Boil the sauce until smooth, then add the veal pieces.

Simmer and serve

Reduce heat and simmer gently for about 30 minutes.
Serve the curry neatly with boiled 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.

Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,433 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Apple + ricetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,311 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Veal + oniontop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6,841 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Onion + appletop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,206 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Veal + ricetop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,119 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions: Break down when fried and sieved to give the sauce body and mild sweetness.
Ground rice: Thickens the sauce as it boils, giving it a smooth, body-rich texture.
Curry paste or curry powder: Supplies the spice flavour that defines the dish.
Veal: Provides the main protein; it is already cooked, so it only needs to warm through in the sauce.

The step that matters

Boiling the sauce until smooth before adding the veal. Ground rice thickens as its starch swells in boiling liquid. If the sauce is not fully boiled and smooth, it stays grainy or thin and can be lumpy when the veal goes in.

Swap the apple

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

Coconutfits better
Avocadofits better
Lemonfits better
Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, onion, 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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Veal Curry, Made with Cold Cooked Veal