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Meat, Egg, and Vegetable Curry

A curry of beef or mutton, eggs, onions, turnip, carrot, beetroot, ginger, spices, butter, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and beetroot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 336 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Meat, Egg, and Vegetable Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spices

  1. Grind all the spices together.

  2. In a saucepan, melt the butter and add the ground spices.

Cook the curry

  1. Cut the meat into small pieces and fry in the butter.

  2. Add ½ cup of water and bring to a boil.

  3. Chop the beetroot into very small pieces and add it to the pot.

  4. Cook for 30 minutes.

  5. Chop the remaining vegetables into small pieces and add them.

  6. Simmer for 45 minutes, stirring frequently.

  7. Mix in the ground turmeric for color.

  8. Warm the eggs through for 5 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with rice.

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. Turnip + beetroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together336 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Carrot + gingertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Carrot + beetroottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together699 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef or mutton
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender with long simmering.
Butter
Carries the spice flavors and adds richness to the curry.
Onions
Add sweetness and body as they soften into the sauce.
Eggs
Set gently in the hot curry, adding richness and body.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and soft texture as it cooks down in the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmering the meat and vegetables. Cooking too hard or too briefly can leave the meat tough or the vegetables unevenly cooked. A gentle, steady simmer with frequent stirring lets the meat tenderize and keeps the sauce from scorching on the bottom of the pot.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, egg, turnip, carrot, beetroot, ginger, clove):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, egg, turnip, carrot, beetroot, ginger, clove. 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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