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Bengal Curry

A curry made with meat, onions, garlic, cardamom, cinnamon, curry powder, curry paste, butter, lemon juice, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Bengal Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the meat into pieces.

  2. Slice the onions and place them in a saucepan with the butter, cardamom, garlic, and cinnamon.

  3. Cook over medium heat until the onions are tender but not browned.

Cook and serve

  1. Stir in the curry powder, curry paste, meat, and salt.

  2. Cover and simmer in the oven: 1 hour for chicken or rabbit, 2 hours for beef or mutton.

  3. Add lemon juice before serving.

  4. Serve with well-boiled rice.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cardamom + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,299 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Clove + cardamomtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,114 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  5. Cardamom + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together405 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Meat
Provides the protein base that becomes tender during the long, covered simmer.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook, building the body and flavor of the sauce.
Butter
Carries the spices and adds richness to the sauce.
Curry powder
Supplies the main spiced flavor of the dish.
Curry paste
Adds concentrated spice flavor and depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Cook the onions until tender but not browned. Browning the onions makes the sauce taste bitter and darker, while cooking them gently until soft lets them dissolve into a smooth, sweet base that carries the spices.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, clove, garlic, cardamom, cinnamon, butter, lemon):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, clove, garlic, cardamom, cinnamon, butter, lemon. 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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