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A Bengal Currie

A curry made with onions, garlic, turmeric, ginger, cayenne, gravy, and mutton simmered until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Turmeric and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,776 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

A Bengal Currie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Slice and fry 3 large onions in 2 ounces of butter until done, then remove from the pan.

  2. In a stewpan, combine 3 pounded onions and 1 small clove of pounded garlic with 2 teaspoons turmeric, 1 teaspoon powdered ginger, 1 teaspoon salt, and 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper.

  3. Add the butter from frying the onions and ½ cup of good gravy.

  4. Stew for 10 minutes, ensuring it does not burn.

Simmer with meat

  1. Stir in the fried onions and 1 ½ cups more gravy.

  2. Add 1 ½ pounds of mutton or other meat and simmer gently for 1 hour or longer until perfectly tender.

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. Turmeric + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Clove + turmerictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,876 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Sliced onions fried until done and pounded onions form the thick, flavourful body of the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for frying and carries flavour through the stewed base.
Good gravy
Provides the liquid that stews the base and turns it into a sauce.
Mutton or other meat
Becomes tender through long gentle simmering, absorbing the sauce's flavour.

The step that matters

Stewing the spiced base without burning. Ground spices and onions scorch easily over direct heat because their sugars and proteins brown quickly. Keeping the heat low and stirring preserves a smooth, even flavour before the liquid and meat are added.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, clove, garlic, turmeric, ginger, pepper, mutton):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, clove, garlic, turmeric, ginger, pepper, mutton. 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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