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Indian Curry

A curry made with meat, onion, lemon juice, pepper, salt, sour milk, curry powder, and flour.

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 ↓

Indian Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the meat into small pieces.

  2. Peel and finely chop the onion.

  3. Mix the onion with the lemon juice, pepper, and salt.

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, combine the sour milk with the curry powder and flour until smooth.

Combine and cook

  1. Put the meat mixture into a large bag.

  2. Add the sour milk mixture to the bag.

  3. Cook for 45 minutes.

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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

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

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Sour milk
Its acidity tenderizes the meat and gives the curry a tangy flavor.
Flour
Thickens the sour milk mixture so it clings to the meat as a sauce.
Curry powder
Provides the main spice flavor of the dish.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma as it cooks down into the curry.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and helps tenderize the meat.

The step that matters

Cook for 45 minutes. Cooking for the full time lets the meat become tender and the flour thicken the sauce. Stopping early can leave meat tough and the sauce thin.

Swap the onion

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

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

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