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Curried Meat

A stew of meat, onion, and mushrooms flavored with curry powder and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Curried Meat

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a clean stewpan.

  2. Add the pieces of meat, onion, and mushrooms; fry lightly until golden brown.

  3. Stir in the stock gradually and simmer for 10-15 minutes.

  4. Mix the curry powder (or paste) with a little cream or milk, then stir it into the stew.

  5. Add the lemon juice and skim off any fat before serving.

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 + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Meat + mushroomtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,423 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean meat
Provides the main protein and body of the stew once cooked through.
Onion
Softens and browns during frying, adding sweetness and depth to the sauce.
Butter
Carries the curry flavours and browns the meat and onion for richness.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced aroma and flavour that defines the dish.
Stock
Forms the liquid base in which the meat and vegetables simmer.

The step that matters

Frying the meat and onion until golden brown. Browning builds deep flavour through the Maillard reaction; pale, steamed pieces give a flat, bland stew.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, meat, onion, mushroom, cream):

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, meat, onion, mushroom, cream. 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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