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A Dry Currie

A dry currie is a spiced meat stew cooked with onions, apples, and lettuce or cabbage, simmered in gravy or broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,562 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

A Dry Currie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Rub the meat with curry powder, flour, and salt until it adheres.

  2. Melt butter in a deep saucepan over medium heat until it begins to color.

  3. Add the meat and brown it evenly, shaking the pan every minute.

Build the curry

  1. Remove the meat and add minced onions and eschalots to the pan.

  2. Fry until softened, then add gravy, broth, or boiling water.

  3. Add the apple and shredded lettuce or cabbage.

  4. Stew the mixture slowly until cooked through.

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 + lettucetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 recipes

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

  2. Flour + lettucetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,236 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Apple + lettucetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together515 recipes

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

  5. Butter + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton or fowl
Provides the protein that becomes tender and rich during slow stewing.
Curry powder
Supplies the main spice flavour and aroma of the dish.
Flour
Coats the meat and helps thicken the sauce as it cooks.
Butter
Carries the spices and browns the meat, adding richness.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they fry, forming the body of the sauce.
Apple
Adds acidity and a touch of sweetness that balances the spices.

The step that matters

Browning the meat evenly. Shaking the pan every minute keeps the meat from sticking and burning in one spot, so browning develops evenly. Browned surfaces through the Maillard reaction add deep, savoury flavour that later stewing cannot fully replace.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, flour, butter, onion, lettuce):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, flour, butter, onion, lettuce. 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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