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A Dry Curry

A dry curry made with fowl or veal, onions, spices, milk, almonds or coconut, and lemon or sour apple, served over rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Coriander and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,498 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

A Dry Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Fry the minced onions in butter in a pan until golden, then drain them.

  2. Fry the fowl or veal pieces in the same pan until browned.

Make the curry

  1. Add curry powder, salt, milk or cream, pounded almonds or coconut, and a little water to the meat.

  2. Stir in the coriander seed, Cayenne, and fried onions.

  3. Cover the pan and let it stew until the meat is tender, shaking occasionally to prevent burning.

  4. Just before serving, add lemon juice or a sliced sour apple to the stew.

Serve

  1. Serve the curry with cooked rice on the side.

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. Coriander + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,498 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  3. Coriander + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,949 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Almond + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,456 recipes

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

  5. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Fowl or veal
Provides the protein; slow stewing with moisture turns it tender.
Onions
Fried until golden, they add sweetness and body to the sauce.
Coriander seed
Supplies the warm, aromatic flavour that defines the curry.
Milk or cream
Adds richness and softens the spice, giving the sauce a smoother texture.
Pounded almonds or coconut
Thickens the sauce and adds nutty, mild sweetness.
Lemon juice or sour apple
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, spiced sauce.

The step that matters

Stewing the meat covered and stirring to prevent burning. Gentle covered stewing with occasional shaking lets the meat become tender without the milk-based sauce scorching on the pan bottom, which would make it bitter and sticky.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, coriander, pepper, milk, almond, lemon, rice):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, coriander, pepper, milk, almond, lemon, rice. 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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