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Dry Curries

A dry mutton curry made with butter, shallot, garlic, and mutton broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,000 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Dry Curries

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the mutton into half-inch squares.

  2. Prepare a curry using mutton broth instead of chicken broth, and omit any rice.

  3. Transfer the finished curry to a bowl.

Cook the mutton

  1. In a casserole, melt the butter over low heat.

  2. Add the mutton pieces with some sauce and spread them out.

  3. Stir the meat continuously to reduce moisture until it becomes dry and powdery.

  4. In another option, fry the minced shallot and garlic in the melted butter before adding the mutton.

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. Shallot + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Shallot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Mutton + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,781 recipes

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

  5. Butter + shallottop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Provides the meat that becomes dry and powdery as its moisture cooks off.
Butter
Carries flavor and helps the meat brown gently in the casserole.
Shallot
Adds a mild, sweet aromatic base when fried in the butter.
Garlic
Adds aroma when fried gently with the shallot in the butter.

The step that matters

Stirring the meat continuously. Stirring keeps the mutton from scorching while its moisture evaporates, so it dries evenly into a powdery texture rather than burning on the bottom of the casserole.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, butter, shallot, garlic):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, butter, shallot, garlic. 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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