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The Admiral's Curry

A curry stew with veal stock, curry powder, paste, chutney, and meat, served with pickled mango sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

The Admiral's Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Melt the butter in a stew-pan over medium heat.

  2. Add the sliced onions, diced carrots, and turnips; let them brown.

  3. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve.

Cook the curry

  1. Stir in the veal stock, curry powder, curry paste, and chutney; mix well for 10 minutes.

  2. Add your choice of meat and stew over medium heat, adding broth or milk as needed to prevent drying.

  3. Simmer until the meat is cooked through.

Serve

  1. Serve with sauce from pickled mangoes on the side.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Carrot + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,351 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Break down into a sweet, savoury base as they brown, adding depth of flavour.
Veal stock
Provides liquid and savoury body that forms the curry sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the vegetables brown.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced aroma that defines the dish.
Chutney
Adds sweetness and acidity to balance the spices.
Meat of choice
Forms the main protein, cooked gently in the sauce until tender.

The step that matters

Simmering the meat with added broth or milk. Meat cooked in a thick sauce can dry out and toughen if the liquid reduces too far. Adding broth or milk as needed keeps the pieces moist, and a gentle simmer cooks them evenly without tightening the proteins.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Coconutfits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Avocadofits about as well
  4. Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, carrot, turnip, veal, meat, milk. 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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