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Curry Soup

A veal and celery soup flavored with curry powder and arrowroot, served with boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,169 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Curry Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Cut the veal into small dice and chop the bone into small pieces.

  2. Combine the veal, bone, water, and sweet herbs in a large pot and bring to a boil.

  3. Chop the celery into small pieces.

  4. Fry the celery in oil until light brown, then add to the pot.

  5. Boil the mixture until it reduces to half the quantity.

  6. Strain the soup and let it cool.

  7. Remove the fat from the cooled soup.

Finish and serve

  1. Add 1 tablespoon of curry powder and ½ tablespoon of arrowroot for each pint of soup.

  2. Boil the soup for 5 minutes.

  3. Serve the soup with boiled rice in a separate dish.

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. Celery + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Celery + arrowroottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together114 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Arrowroot + ricetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together200 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Veal + celerytop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,336 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Veal + ricetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,119 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal knuckle
Gives the soup its body and meaty flavour as it simmers down.
Celery
Adds aromatic, savoury flavour to the stock once fried and simmered.
Curry powder
Provides the spiced, aromatic flavour that defines the soup.
Arrowroot
Thickens the soup into a smooth, lightly glossy consistency.

The step that matters

Adding the arrowroot. Arrowroot is a starch that must be boiled to thicken. Added to hot liquid it can clump if not stirred in well, and it loses thickening power if boiled too long or too hard.

Swap the arrowroot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, celery, rice):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Arrowrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, celery, 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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