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Curry Kari

A curry made with veal, rabbit, or mutton, onions, garlic, apple, curry powder, chutney, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Curry Kari

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the meat into pieces, not slices.

  2. Slice the onions, garlic, and apple.

Cook

  1. Fry the onions, garlic, and apple in the oil until browned.

  2. Add the meat, gravy, curry powder, chutney, hot spices, salt, pepper, and lemon juice.

  3. Steam gently until the meat is tender.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Clove + appletop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Garlic + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Browning in the oil builds sweetness and a deep savoury base for the curry.
Veal, rabbit, or mutton
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender through gentle steaming.
Gravy
Adds moisture and liquid so the meat can steam and soften in the pan.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced flavour that defines the dish.
Sour apple
Adds acidity and a tart balance to the rich, spiced sauce.

The step that matters

Steam gently until the meat is tender. Low, gentle heat with enough moisture breaks down the connective tissue in tougher meats slowly. Boiling hard can toughen the proteins and dry the sauce, so keep the heat low and check the liquid.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, clove, garlic, veal, pepper, lemon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, clove, garlic, veal, pepper, lemon. 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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