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The Begum's Curry

A curry made with diced meat or chicken, curry powder, vinegar, Harvey sauce, coconut juice, ground rice, butter, and gravy, finished with fried onions.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Coconut and rice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,063 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

The Begum's Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curry

  1. In a frying pan, melt butter and fry the diced meat until browned.

  2. In a bowl, mix together curry powder, vinegar, Harvey sauce, salt, coconut juice, ground rice, and butter.

  3. Add the mixture to the browned meat along with the gravy and stir well.

  4. Let it cook for a few minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Transfer the curry to a brown earthenware jar.

  2. Fry sliced onions in butter.

  3. Add the fried onions to the curry.

  4. Allow the jar to simmer on the hob until ready to serve.

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. Coconut + ricetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,063 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Rice + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

  3. Coconut + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Coconut + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,831 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Meat + ricetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,481 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Meat or chicken
Provides the main protein, which browns in butter to build savoury flavour.
Curry powder
Supplies the spice blend that gives the curry its characteristic aroma and colour.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavours and balances the richness of the sauce.
Ground rice
Thickens the sauce as it cooks, giving it body.
Gravy
Adds liquid and savoury depth, keeping the meat moist as it simmers.
Coconut juice
Contributes moisture and a mild sweetness to the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmering the curry in the jar. Gentle simmering lets the ground rice thicken the sauce and the meat become tender while the spices blend. Boiling hard can scorch the bottom and make the meat tough.

Swap the coconut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, vinegar, sauce, rice, butter, onion):

  1. Avocadofits about as well
  2. Coconutthe original
  3. Grapefits less well
  4. Mangofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, vinegar, sauce, rice, butter, onion. 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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