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Curried Potatoes

A dish of sliced potatoes cooked in butter and curry-flavored gravy, topped with diced ham.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,230 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Curried Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Fry the sliced potatoes in butter until golden.

  2. Mix curry powder into the gravy and add to the potatoes.

  3. Stew the mixture for a few minutes until heated through.

  4. Top with diced ham before serving.

  5. Add lemon juice or pickles if desired.

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. Potato + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

  2. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Butter + hamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Potato + hamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together127 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Form the bulk of the dish and turn golden and crisp-edged when fried in butter.
Butter
Fat that fries the potato slices, adding richness and browning.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced aroma and flavour that defines the dish.
Gravy
Liquid that carries the curry flavour and moistens the potatoes as they stew.
Ham
Adds savoury, salty meat flavour and bite to the finished dish.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, butter, ham):

  1. Applefits about as well
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, butter, ham. 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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