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Vegetable Curry

A curry made with onions, apple, cucumber, butter, coconut, spices, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Coconut and ginger are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,168 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Vegetable Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and slice the onions and apple thinly.

  2. Cut the cucumber into 1.5‑inch long by 1‑inch wide pieces.

Cook the vegetables

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan.

  2. Dust the vegetables with flour.

  3. Add the apple and onions to the butter, cover, and fry for 20 minutes without browning.

  4. Add the cucumber and fry for another 15 minutes.

Finish the curry

  1. Stir in the coconut, curry powder, curry paste, ground ginger, salt, and milk.

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. Coconut + gingertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,168 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Onion + cucumbertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,050 recipes

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

  4. Onion + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,595 recipes

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

  5. Apple + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,424 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Bulk and sweetness; they soften slowly and become mellow and sweet when cooked gently.
Apple
Adds sweetness and body as it softens into the base.
Butter
Fat that carries the flavours and helps the vegetables cook without sticking.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when the liquid is added.
Milk
Adds richness and creaminess to the sauce.
Curry powder
Provides the main warm, aromatic spice flavour.

The step that matters

Fry the apple and onions covered, without browning. Keeping the pan covered and the vegetables pale lets them soften and release their juices into the butter, building a sweet, mellow base. Browning would make the flavour harsher and more bitter.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, apple, butter, coconut, ginger, milk, flour):

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, apple, butter, coconut, ginger, milk, 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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