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Curried Meat

A stew of meat, onions, mushrooms, and curry powder simmered in stock and finished with lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Curried Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut lean meat, rabbit, fish, or fowl into small pieces suitable for serving.

  2. In a clean stewpan, melt 1½ oz. of butter.

Cook

  1. Add the meat, sliced onion, and chopped mushrooms; fry lightly until golden brown.

  2. Gradually stir in 1 pint of stock or broth, which need not be seasoned.

  3. Simmer for 10-15 minutes.

  4. Mix ½ oz. of curry powder with a little milk or stock and stir into the pot.

  5. Add the juice of ½ lemon and skim off the 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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  3. Mushroom + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,231 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. Onion + buttertop 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

Curry powder
Provides the main spice flavour and aroma, blooming in the hot fat and stock.
Butter
Carries the curry flavours and gives richness when frying the meat and onion.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it fries, adding body to the sauce.
Mushrooms
Release moisture and add savoury depth as they brown.
Stock or broth
Forms the liquid base that simmers the meat into a sauce.

The step that matters

Frying the meat until golden brown. Browning the meat and onion in butter builds savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pale, steamed meat gives a flatter, less developed sauce.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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