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Vegetable Curry

A mixed vegetable stew flavored with curry powder, butter, and cream, served with rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Cauliflower and cucumber match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 584 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Vegetable Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mince or slice the vegetables.

  2. Melt the butter in a stew pan.

Cook the curry

  1. Toss the vegetables in curry powder and cook in the butter until half cooked.

  2. Pour in enough cream or gravy mixed with curry powder to cover the vegetables.

  3. Stew until the vegetables are tender.

  4. Add a little salt and stir in lemon juice for added flavor.

Serve

  1. Optionally, add mashed potatoes, fried onions, or an apple for extra richness.

  2. Serve with boiled rice on a separate dish.

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. Cauliflower + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together584 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Cauliflower + cabbagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Beans + spinachtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together365 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Cauliflower + beanstop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together290 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Cauliflower + spinachtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together117 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Melted fat that carries curry powder flavor and gives the vegetables richness.
Cream or gravy
Liquid that softens the vegetables while stewing and adds richness to the sauce.
Curry powder
Spice blend that supplies the dish's characteristic aroma and flavor.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the stewed vegetables.

The step that matters

Cooking the vegetables only until half cooked before stewing. Vegetables of different densities soften at different rates. Partly cooking them in butter first, then finishing in liquid, helps them reach tenderness together without turning mushy.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, cauliflower, cabbage, cucumber, peas, beans, spinach):

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, cauliflower, cabbage, cucumber, peas, beans, spinach. 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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