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Currie

A creamy curry made with curry powder, flour, butter, cream, and slices of veal, rabbit, or turkey, served over boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Currie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a pan, melt the butter and mix in the flour and curry powder.

  2. Add the cream and salt, stirring until combined.

Cook and serve

  1. In a separate pan, cook the meat until browned.

  2. Combine the meat with the curry mixture.

  3. Serve with boiled rice and a squeeze of lemon.

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

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

  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. Butter + ricetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

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

  5. Flour + ricetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Butter
Melts to form the fat base that carries the curry flavour through the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter and cream into a smooth, body-rich sauce.
Curry powder
Supplies the main spice aroma and flavour of the dish.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, mellowing the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, spiced sauce.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour into the butter before adding cream. Cooking flour in melted butter forms a roux that thickens the sauce smoothly. Adding cream to raw flour without this step can leave lumps and a floury taste.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, cream, veal, rice):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, cream, veal, 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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