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Vegetable Curry

A curry made with carrots, potatoes, artichokes, onions, curry powder, flour, salt, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Vegetable Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean, peel, and slice the carrots, potatoes, and artichokes.

Cook the vegetables

  1. In a large pot, add the sliced vegetables to the boiling water, except for the onions, and boil for 1.5 hours.

  2. In a skillet, fry the sliced onions in butter or oil until golden brown, then add them to the pot.

  3. Season the mixture with salt.

Thicken and finish

  1. In a small bowl, mix the curry powder and flour with a little cold water, then add to the pot and stir until the contents thicken.

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. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

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

  3. Artichoke + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together466 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + artichoketop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together226 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the curry sauce as it heats, giving it body.
Curry powder
Provides the main spiced aroma and flavor of the dish.
Onions
Browned in fat first, adding sweetness and savory depth to the sauce.
Potatoes
Starchy vegetable that softens during long boiling and adds body to the stew.

The step that matters

Stirring in the curry-flour paste. Flour mixed with cold water must be fully dispersed before it meets the hot liquid, or it clumps. Stirring as it goes in lets the starch swell evenly and thicken the sauce smoothly.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, artichoke, onion, flour, butter):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, artichoke, onion, flour, butter. 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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