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Silon Curry

A coconut and cream curry with cooked meat, simmered with onion, butter, curry powder, flour, and beef extract.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and chicken match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,148 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Silon Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curry

  1. In a chafing dish, cook the onion in butter for 5 minutes.

  2. Add curry powder and flour, stir, and cook for 3 minutes.

  3. Pour in boiling water and beef extract, add salt, and cook for 6 minutes.

Add the meat and serve

  1. Stir in the cold cooked meat and grated coconut, then add cream.

  2. Cook for 10 minutes and serve.

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. Beef + chickentop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,148 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  2. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Onion + chickentop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Chicken + coconuttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together808 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Fat that softens the onion and carries the curry powder's flavour.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth sauce as it cooks.
Curry powder
Provides the main spice aroma and flavour of the dish.
Fresh grated coconut
Adds richness, moisture and a sweet, nutty flavour to the sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and body, softening the sauce's flavour.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour with the curry powder. Cooking flour in fat for a few minutes removes its raw taste and lets it thicken the liquid smoothly. Adding the boiling water too early can leave lumps.

Swap the coconut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, butter, flour, beef, chicken, cream):

  1. Avocadofits about as well
  2. Coconutthe original
  3. Raisinfits less well
  4. Grapefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, flour, beef, chicken, cream. 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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