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Mr. AUNOTT’s Currie

A cabbage and apple curry with onions, garlic, butter, flour, and mutton or beef gravy, seasoned with curry powder and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Mr. AUNOTT’s Currie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove all outside leaves from the cabbage until it is the size of an egg and chop it fine.

  2. In a bowl, mix the chopped cabbage, sliced apples, lemon juice, black pepper, and curry powder.

Make the curry

  1. In a pot, heat the fried onions, minced garlic, butter, and flour until boiling.

  2. Add the cabbage mixture to the pot and stir well.

  3. Pour in the gravy and let the mixture stew together.

  4. If not hot enough, add cayenne pepper to taste.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  4. Cabbage + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,001 recipes

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

  5. Cabbage + garlictop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together635 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the gravy as it cooks with the butter, giving the curry body.
Mutton or beef gravy
Provides the main liquid and savoury meaty flavour for the stew.
Onions
Browned onions build a sweet, deep flavour base for the curry.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and carries the curry flavours.
Curry powder
Supplies the main spice aroma and warm flavour.
Apples
Add gentle sweetness and soft body that balances the spices.

The step that matters

Heating the butter and flour with the onions. Flour must be stirred while it heats with the butter so it does not clump. Cooking it briefly removes the raw starch taste and lets it thicken the gravy smoothly when the liquid is added.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, lemon, pepper, onion, garlic, butter, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, lemon, pepper, onion, garlic, butter, flour. 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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