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A butter-based curry of fowls or rabbits with onions, broth, curry powder, flour, salt, lemon juice, and melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Curries

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the curry

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan.

  2. Add the meat and sliced onions; cook over medium heat until browned.

  3. Pour in the broth and simmer for 20 minutes.

  4. In a bowl, mix the curry powder, flour, and salt with a little cold water until smooth.

  5. Add this mixture to the stewpan and stir until it boils.

  6. Simmer for an additional 20 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, add lemon juice and melted butter.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Rabbit + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,292 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Rabbit + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  4. Rabbit + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together626 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour 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

Fowls or rabbits
Provide the main protein, which becomes tender during simmering and browns at the start.
Onions
Add sweetness and body as they soften and brown in the butter.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the meat rather than running thin.
Curry powder
Supplies the warm, aromatic spice flavour that defines the dish.
Butter
Carries fat for browning and adds richness to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring in the flour and curry mixture. Flour mixed with cold water first prevents lumps; once added to hot liquid it must be stirred until it boils so the starch swells and thickens the sauce evenly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Avocadofits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, rabbit, onion, 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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