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A Common Indian Currie

A curry made with meat, curry powder, onions, and simmered in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

A Common Indian Currie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix curry powder, salt, and flour in a bowl.

  2. Cut the meat into thick small cutlets or dice.

  3. Rub half of the mixed powder over the meat.

Fry the onions and meat

  1. Fry the sliced onions (and garlic or shallots if using) in butter until golden brown, then remove the onions and drain them on a sieve.

  2. Add more butter to the pan and lightly fry the meat until browned.

  3. Drain the meat from fat and place it in a clean saucepan.

  4. Strew the fried onions over the meat.

Simmer

  1. Add boiling water to almost cover it.

  2. Mix the remaining curry powder with a little broth or cold water, then pour in the curry mixture.

  3. Shake the pan to blend it with the gravy.

  4. Simmer gently until the meat is tender, about 1.25 to 2.5 hours depending on the meat type.

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

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Garlic + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Clove + shallottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Flour + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + shallottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,431 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Meat
Provides the protein and body of the curry, becoming tender during long gentle simmering.
Onions
Browned in butter to add sweetness and depth to the gravy.
Curry powder
Supplies the spice flavour that defines the dish, bloomed in fat and liquid.
Flour
Mixed with the spices to help thicken the gravy.
Butter
Carries the spices and browns the onions and meat, adding richness.

The step that matters

Browning the meat. Frying the meat until well browned builds deep savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction. Draining off the fat afterwards keeps the finished gravy from tasting greasy.

Swap the clove

The recipe marks clove as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, flour, onion, garlic, shallot, butter):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, flour, onion, garlic, shallot, butter. 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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