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Spinach Curry

A curry made with spinach, sorrel or green gooseberries, sour apples, tamarind, onion, curry powder, gravy or water, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Spinach and sorrel match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 204 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Spinach Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pick and wash the spinach, sorrel, or gooseberries.

  2. Chop the sour apples and tamarinds.

  3. Fry the onion until tender.

Make the curry

  1. Add the chopped vegetables and fruits to the onion.

  2. Stir in the curry powder, mixing well.

  3. Add gravy or water and butter, then simmer.

  4. If desired, add small bits of meat or seafood and cook until done.

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. Spinach + sorreltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together204 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Sorrel + tamarindtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Spinach + tamarindtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together19 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  4. Spinach + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,336 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Sorrel + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together459 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Spinach
Forms the leafy body of the curry and softens into a thick, tender texture as it simmers.
Sour apples
Add tartness that balances the richness of the butter and curry powder.
Tamarinds
Provide sourness and fruity acidity that gives the curry its characteristic tang.
Onion
Builds a sweet, savoury base as it softens and browns during frying.
Curry powder
Supplies the spice blend that gives the dish its aroma and warm flavour.
Butter
Adds fat that carries the spice aromas and gives the sauce a smooth, rich mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Fry the onion until tender. Onion cooked only briefly stays sharp and watery. Frying it until soft lets its sugars concentrate slightly and forms the sweet, savoury base the whole curry depends on.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (spinach, sorrel, tamarind, onion, butter, meat):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against spinach, sorrel, tamarind, onion, butter, meat. 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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