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A Bengal Currie

A Bengal Currie is a mutton curry with onions, garlic, turmeric, ginger, salt, cayenne pepper, and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Turmeric and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,776 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

A Bengal Currie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curry base

  1. Fry the sliced onions in butter until done, then remove from the pan.

  2. In a stewpan, combine the pounded onions and garlic with turmeric, ginger, salt, and cayenne pepper.

  3. Add the butter from frying the onions and ½ cup of gravy; stew for 10 minutes without burning.

Simmer with meat

  1. Stir in the fried onions and 1 pint of gravy.

  2. Add the meat and simmer gently for 1 hour or until perfectly tender.

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. Turmeric + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Clove + turmerictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,876 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Break down into the sauce, giving body and a sweet, savoury base.
Butter
Carries the spices and adds richness and fat to the sauce.
Mutton or other meat
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender through long, gentle simmering.
Gravy
Supplies liquid that cooks the onions and meat and forms the sauce.

The step that matters

Stewing the base without burning. Onions scorch easily when stewed in butter over direct heat. Scorched sugars taste bitter and darken the curry, so the heat must stay low and the pan must be watched and stirred.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, clove, garlic, turmeric, ginger, pepper, mutton):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, clove, garlic, turmeric, ginger, pepper, mutton. 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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