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Curried Veal

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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

  1. In a pot, stew the veal in 1 pint of water.

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

  3. Mix the curry powder with a little water and add it to the pot.

  4. Combine the flour with enough milk to make a wet paste, then add it 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
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender through slow stewing in water.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook, forming the savory base of the gravy.
Apple
Adds subtle sweetness and body that balances the sharpness of the curry powder.
Curry powder
Supplies the spice blend that gives the dish its characteristic aroma and flavor.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as its starch swells with liquid during cooking.

The step that matters

Adding the flour paste to the pot. Flour must be fully mixed into a smooth wet paste before it goes in, or it will clump. Its starch then thickens the gravy as it heats, so the liquid should be simmering to thicken evenly.

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.

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