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Curry Savoury

A baked casserole of rice, lentils, tomatoes, and curry seasoned with eggs and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,065 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Curry Savoury

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Boil the rice and lentils together until tender. Let the mixture cool slightly.

  2. Slice the tomatoes and place them in a pie dish.

Assemble and bake

  1. Mix the curry powder, beaten eggs, and salt with the rice and lentils. Add milk if necessary.

  2. Spread the mixture over the tomatoes and dot the mixture with butter.

  3. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 30 to 40 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. Rice + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  4. Lentils + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together463 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Rice + lentilstop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together256 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the rice and lentils together and help the bake set firm.
Lentils
Add protein-rich body and a hearty, dense texture to the bake.
Rice
Provides the bulk and starchy structure of the bake.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the top brown as it bakes.
Tomatoes
Add moisture and a bright, acidic note beneath the rice mixture.
Curry powder
Supplies the warm, aromatic spice flavour throughout the dish.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool slightly before adding the eggs. Eggs scramble when added to very hot food, so cooling the rice and lentils first lets the beaten eggs blend in smoothly and set evenly during baking rather than curdling in lumps.

Swap the lentils

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, tomato, egg, butter, milk):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Peanutfits better
  3. Peasfits better
  4. Lentilsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, tomato, egg, butter, milk. 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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