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Meat Korma

A spiced meat stew cooked with yogurt, ghee, ginger, poppy seeds, and dried chillies.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and ginger are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,595 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Meat Korma

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the paste and marinade

  1. Make a paste of ginger, poppy seeds, chillies, and half of the chopped onions.

  2. Mix this paste with the curd and big pieces of meat.

  3. Chop the remaining onions.

Cook

  1. Heat ghee in a pan and slightly brown the chopped onions.

  2. Add the meat to the pan and cook until the water from the meat dries up.

  3. Add a little more water, cover, and simmer on low heat until the water evaporates.

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 + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,595 recipes

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

  2. Yogurt + poppy seedtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together72 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Onion + poppy seedtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together214 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Butter + poppy seedtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together258 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Yogurt + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,333 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Meat
Provides the main protein; it becomes tender during the long, slow simmer.
Curd (yogurt)
Adds acidity and moisture, helping tenderize the meat while it marinates.
Ghee (clarified butter)
Provides fat for frying the onions and carries the aroma through the dish.
Onions
Browning in the ghee adds sweetness and body to the sauce.
Poppy seeds
Ground into the paste, they thicken the sauce and add a nutty flavour.

The step that matters

Cook the meat until the water dries up. Browning the meat once its released water has evaporated concentrates flavour. If it is covered too early, the meat steams and stays pale and flat-tasting.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, onion, yogurt, ghee, butter, poppy seed):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, onion, yogurt, ghee, butter, poppy seed. 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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