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Meat, Egg, and Vegetable Curry

A curry made with beef or mutton, eggs, onions, turnip, carrot, beetroot, ginger, spices, butter, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and beetroot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 336 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Meat, Egg, and Vegetable Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grind all the spices.

  2. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  3. Add the spices to the butter.

  4. Cut the meat into small pieces.

  5. Fry the meat in the butter.

  6. Add ½ cup of water.

  7. Let the mixture boil.

  8. Chop the beetroot into very small pieces.

  9. Add the chopped beetroot.

  10. Cook for 30 minutes.

  11. Chop the other vegetables into small pieces.

  12. Add the chopped vegetables.

  13. Simmer for 45 minutes.

  14. Stir frequently.

Finish and serve

  1. Hard boil the eggs.

  2. Cut the boiled eggs in halves.

  3. Add the ground turmeric to color the curry. Mix well.

  4. Add the eggs to warm through for 5 minutes.

  5. Serve hot with 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. Turnip + beetroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together336 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Carrot + gingertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,377 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + beetroottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together699 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef or mutton
Provides the main protein and savory meaty body of the curry.
Eggs
Add richness and firm, sliceable protein when cooked through in the sauce.
Onions
Break down as they cook, adding sweetness and body to the curry base.
Carrot
Softens during simmering, adding natural sweetness and body to the sauce.
Butter
Carries the spices and adds fat, richness, and smooth mouthfeel.
Beetroot
Adds earthy sweetness and a deep red color to the curry.

The step that matters

Simmer until the meat is tender. Beef and mutton need long, gentle simmering so collagen breaks down into gelatin; rushing this leaves the meat tough and chewy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, egg, turnip, carrot, beetroot, ginger, clove):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, egg, turnip, carrot, beetroot, ginger, clove. 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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