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Curry of Mutton

A curry made with mutton, curry powder, flour, pepper, tomato, and water, simmered until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Curry of Mutton

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Mix curry powder, flour, and pepper in a bowl.

  2. Add to melted fat in a pan.

  3. Slowly pour in hot water and strained tomato, mixing well.

Cook the mutton

  1. Cut mutton into small pieces and fry in hot fat until browned.

  2. Add the fried mutton to the sauce and simmer until 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. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + muttontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,442 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + muttontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together452 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).

  4. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + tomatotop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Browning in hot fat builds flavour, and slow simmering turns its connective tissue tender.
Curry powder
Supplies the main spice aroma and flavour of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the fat and liquid.
Strained tomato
Adds acidity, body and a fruity base to the sauce.

The step that matters

Frying the mutton until browned. Browning meat in hot fat creates savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pieces that are crowded or wet will steam instead and stay grey and bland.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, pepper, mutton):

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, 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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