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Quoorma Curry

A mutton curry made with ginger, spices, almonds, and cream, simmered until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Quoorma Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat and spice base

  1. Combine mutton, ginger, and salt in a bowl.

  2. Melt butter in a stew pan.

  3. Add shallots and garlic to the pan and fry until they change color.

  4. Stir in rice flour, coriander, black pepper, cardamom, and cloves.

  5. Cook the mixture for 7 minutes.

  6. Add mutton broth to the pan.

  7. Bring the mixture to a boil, then simmer for 10 minutes.

  8. Pour the mixture over the meat in the bowl and let it sit for 30 minutes.

Simmer and finish

  1. Transfer the mixture to a clean stew pan.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 25 minutes until tender.

  3. Mix in almond infusion, turmeric, sugar, and salt. Stir well.

  4. Simmer gently for 15 minutes.

  5. Finish with lemon juice and cream.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Ginger + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,402 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

Mutton
Provides the meat that becomes tender through long, gentle simmering.
Butter
Carries the aromatics and adds richness to the sauce.
Rice flour
Thickens the broth so the sauce clings to the meat.
Sweet almonds
Add body and a creamy texture to the sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and softens the sharpness of the spices.
Shallots or onions
Build sweetness and savory depth as they fry in the butter.

The step that matters

Bring the mixture to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 25 minutes until tender.. Boiling too hard toughens the meat proteins and can break the sauce, while gentle simmering lets connective tissue soften slowly into tender meat.

Swap the garlic

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, ginger, butter, shallot, clove, rice, flour):

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, ginger, butter, shallot, clove, rice, flour. 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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