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Curry of Mutton

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Curry of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curry base

  1. Fry the sliced onion in butter until soft.

  2. Mix in flour, curry powder, salt, and pepper.

  3. Gradually stir in the stock.

Cook and serve

  1. Add the mutton pieces and simmer until tender.

  2. Serve the meat on a hot platter with a border of rice.

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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Onion
Softens and sweetens as it fries, building the flavour base of the curry.
Butter
Fat that carries curry powder flavour and helps soften the onion.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth, lightly bodied sauce.
Curry powder
Provides the spice flavour that defines the dish.
Stock
Liquid that forms the sauce and gently cooks the meat.
Mutton
Main protein, which becomes tender through slow simmering in the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer the mutton until tender. Lean mutton is tough when cooked hard or fast. Gentle simmering in liquid breaks down connective tissue slowly, so the meat becomes tender rather than dry and chewy. Check for tenderness before serving.

Swap the onion

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

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

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