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Curry of Mutton

A savory mutton curry made with butter, onion, curry powder, flour, stock, lemon juice, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Curry of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curry

  1. In a pan, melt the butter and brown the finely chopped onion with the curry powder.

  2. Add the flour and stir until smooth and browned.

  3. Pour in the stock and add the mutton.

  4. Cook until the sauce thickens, then season with salt, pepper, and lemon juice.

Serve

  1. Serve hot.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,442 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the stock into a sauce as it cooks and gelatinizes.
Butter
Carries the curry powder's flavour and adds richness to the base.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it browns, forming the flavour base of the sauce.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced aroma that defines the dish, bloomed in fat to release flavour.
Mutton
Provides the main protein and meaty flavour, already cooked and simmered in the sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the flour. Stirring the flour until it is smooth and lightly browned cooks out its raw taste and builds nutty flavour. Adding stock too early leaves lumps and a pasty taste.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, butter, lemon, flour, pepper. 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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