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Indian Curry Stew

A lamb stew with onions, carrots, turnip, banana, apple, lemon peel, and curry seasoning, served over rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 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 ↓

Indian Curry Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lamb

  1. Wipe the lamb chops and coat them in flour.

  2. Fry the lamb chops until browned, then place them in a pot.

Make the stew

  1. In the same pan, fry the onion, carrot, and turnip until softened.

  2. Add the banana, apple, and lemon peel to the meat.

  3. Cover with soup stock or water, season with salt, pepper, and chili sauce.

  4. Cook slowly for about 1½ hours or until the meat is tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Mix curry powder and flour, dilute with a little water, and add to the stew just before serving.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Banana + appletop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together435 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Flour + turniptop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb chops
Provide the meat, which becomes tender through slow cooking in the stew.
Flour
Coats the lamb to brown and thickens the stew liquid.
Onion
Builds a sweet, savory base as it softens in the pan.
Banana
Adds natural sweetness and body, softening into the stew as it cooks.
Apple
Adds sweetness and acidity, and body as it breaks down during cooking.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced aroma that defines the flavor of the stew.

The step that matters

Adding the curry powder and flour mixture. Raw flour and spices need heat to lose their raw taste and thicken properly. Adding the mix just before serving, as written, can leave the stew floury or underdeveloped if it is not stirred in thoroughly and allowed to simmer briefly.

Swap the banana

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, flour, onion, carrot, turnip, apple, lemon):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Bananathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, flour, onion, carrot, turnip, apple, lemon. 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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