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Indian Curry

A curry made with onions, butter, curry powder, kidney beans, tomatoes, raisins, chutney, and rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and rice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,065 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Indian Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Heat oil in a frying pan and fry the sliced onions until light brown.

Make the curry

  1. Add butter, curry powder, and a little more oil; cook with the onions for 10 minutes.

  2. Mix in kidney beans, strained tomatoes, raisins, chutney, and water if needed.

  3. Allow to boil slowly for 2 hours.

Serve

  1. Cook rice for 20 minutes until kernels are separate.

  2. Serve the curry in the center of a platter with rice around it and garnish with toast.

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. Tomato + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Raisin + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together565 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Kidney beans + tomatotop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together821 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Softened and browned onions build the sweet, savory base of the curry.
Curry powder
Toasting it in fat releases aromatic compounds that give the curry its flavor.
Kidney beans
Provide the main body and substance of the curry.
Strained tomatoes
Add liquid, acidity and body that help form the sauce.
Raisins
Add sweetness and soft texture that balances the spices.
Butter
Adds fat and richness that carries the spice flavors.

The step that matters

Cooking the curry powder with the onions. Spices bloom in hot fat and become more aromatic, while burning them makes them bitter. Stirring constantly over moderate heat for the full 10 minutes develops flavor without scorching.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, butter, kidney beans, tomato, rice):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, kidney beans, tomato, 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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