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Curry and Rice

A curry made with diced meat, stock, apple, onion, curry powder, and served with rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Meat and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,364 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Curry and Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curry

  1. In a pan, heat the dripping and fry the apple and onion until golden brown.

  2. Stir in the curry powder and flour, frying for a minute.

  3. Add the stock and bring the mixture to a boil.

  4. Season with salt and let it boil gently for 10 minutes.

  5. Add the meat and let everything simmer gently for one hour or longer.

Serve

  1. Serve with a border of rice around the 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. Meat + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Flour + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Apple + oniontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,206 recipes

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

  4. Flour + appletop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,140 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Meat + appletop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together787 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold meat
Provides the main body of the dish and absorbs flavour as it simmers in the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce when fried with the curry powder and liquid.
Curry powder
Supplies the main spiced aroma and flavour of the dish.
Apple
Adds mild sweetness and body that softens into the sauce during cooking.
Onion
Builds savoury sweetness and depth as it browns in the fat.
Dripping
Carries flavour and helps the onion and apple brown in the pan.

The step that matters

Frying the curry powder and flour. Frying the spice and flour briefly in fat releases aroma and cooks out the raw starch taste, so the sauce thickens smoothly without lumps when the stock is added.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, flour, onion. 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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