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An Excellent Indian Curry

A curry made with meat, curry powder, onions, and gravy, served with boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,433 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

An Excellent Indian Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Mix the curry powder, flour, and salt.

  2. Rub half of this mixture over the meat slices evenly.

Fry the onions and meat

  1. Fry the sliced onions slowly in butter until golden brown.

  2. Remove and drain on a sieve.

  3. Add more butter to the pan and fry the meat gently.

  4. Drain excess fat and place the meat in a clean saucepan.

  5. Strew the fried onions over the meat.

  6. Pour in enough boiling gravy to almost cover it.

  7. Mix the remaining curry powder with a little more gravy and pour it into the saucepan. Shake well.

Simmer and serve

  1. Simmer gently until the meat is tender, about 1 hour and 15 minutes to 2 hours and 30 minutes, depending on the meat type.

  2. Add sour apple or cucumbers if desired.

  3. Mix in lemon juice before serving.

  4. Serve with boiled rice.

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 + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Meat + ricetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,481 recipes

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

  5. Apple + ricetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,311 recipes

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

Flour and butter 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

Meat
Slow simmering in gravy turns its connective tissue tender and moist.
Onions
Frying slowly in butter browns them, adding sweetness and savoury depth to the sauce.
Curry powder
Its spices supply the dish's main aroma and flavour, bloomed in fat and gravy.
Flour
Lightly coating the meat helps thicken the gravy as it cooks.
Butter
Fat for frying that browns the onions and meat and carries flavour.

The step that matters

Simmering the meat until tender. Tough cuts need long, gentle simmering so collagen breaks down into gelatin. Boiling hard toughens muscle fibres and can leave the meat dry and stringy, so keep the liquid at a gentle simmer.

Swap the apple

The recipe marks apple as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, flour, onion, butter, lemon, rice):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, flour, onion, butter, lemon, rice. 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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