Skip to main content
Main

Curried Veal

A stew of veal, onions, apple, and curry thickened with flour and milk, served over boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Curried Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Stew the veal

  1. Stew the veal in 1 pint of water in a pot.

  2. Add the chopped onions, chopped apple, and butter.

Finish the curry

  1. Mix the curry powder with a little water.

  2. Add the curry mixture to the pot.

  3. In a bowl, mix the flour with enough milk to create a wet paste.

  4. Add the paste to the pot to thicken the gravy.

  5. Cook slowly for 1.5 hours, seasoning with coarse sea salt to taste.

  6. Garnish with boiled rice before serving.

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

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

  2. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Veal
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender during slow stewing.
Onions
Build the flavour base and add sweetness as they soften and cook down.
Apple
Adds sweetness and body as it breaks down into the gravy.
Butter
Adds fat and richness that carries the curry flavour.
Curry powder
Provides the main aroma and spiced flavour of the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as its starch swells when heated in the liquid.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour paste. Whisk the flour fully into the milk so it is smooth before adding it. Its starch swells when heated, so stirring it evenly into the hot liquid gives a smooth thickened gravy instead of lumps.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, onion, butter, flour, milk, rice):

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Lemonfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, onion, butter, flour, milk, 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.

More veal curry recipes

Soup 15 See all 34 →

You might also like

Rice FrittersRice Fritters84 recipesVeal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesSteamed RiceSteamed Rice48 recipesApple SoupApple Soup33 recipes