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A Common Indian Currie

A curry made with meat, curry powder, onions, garlic or shallots, butter, and water, simmered until tender.

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 the curry powder, salt, and flour together.

  2. Cut the meat into thick small cutlets or dice, then rub half of the mixed powder over it.

Fry the meat and onions

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

  2. Add more butter to the pan and lightly fry the meat, then drain the fat and place it in a clean saucepan.

  3. Strew the fried onions over the meat and add enough boiling water to almost cover it.

Stew

  1. Mix the remaining curry powder with a little broth or cold water, then pour it into the pan after the curry has stewed for a few minutes.

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

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
Its connective tissue softens during long simmering, making the curry tender.
Curry powder
Provides the main spice flavour and aroma of the dish.
Onions
Browning in butter adds sweetness and depth to the sauce.
Flour
Lightly thickens the sauce as the curry stews.
Butter
Carries the spices and gives richness when frying the onions and meat.

The step that matters

Adding the remaining curry powder. Spices bloom in fat and then soften in liquid; adding the second portion after a few minutes of stewing lets it mellow rather than taste raw or bitter.

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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