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Curry of Cold Meat

A curry made with cold meat, onion, tomato, apple, coconut, and curry spices, simmered slowly and served over rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,633 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Curry of Cold Meat

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Heat the butter in a pan.

  2. Slice the onion thinly and fry until light brown.

  3. Stir in the flour and curry powder, cooking for about 1 minute.

  4. Slowly add the stock and bring the sauce to a boil.

  5. Skin and slice the tomato, then peel and chop the apple.

  6. Mix the tomato, apple, salt, curry paste, and coconut into the sauce.

  7. Simmer for 1 hour, stirring frequently.

Add the meat and serve

  1. Cut the cold meat into one-inch squares, removing excess fat and skin.

  2. Add the meat to the sauce and heat gently until warmed through, or simmer until tender if underdone.

  3. Serve in 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 + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + coconuttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together511 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Coconut + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Apple + coconuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together274 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylethanol (rose, floral).

Flour and butter 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

Cold meat
Provides the main protein and bulk of the dish.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with the butter and curry powder.
Onion
Frying until light brown builds sweetness and savoury depth in the base.
Curry powder
Supplies the main spice flavour, toasted briefly in the fat to release aroma.
Apple
Adds mild sweetness that balances the spices and acidity.
Tomato
Adds acidity and body to the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer the sauce before adding the meat. The sauce must simmer long enough for the flour to thicken fully and the spices and vegetables to soften and blend. Cold meat only needs gentle heating, so adding it too early or boiling it can make it tough and dry.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, onion, flour, tomato, coconut, butter):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Mangofits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, onion, flour, tomato, coconut, butter. 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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