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Curried Lamb

A lamb stew flavored with curry powder, simmered with onion, garlic, salt, pepper, and water, served over rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Curried Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the lamb into pieces.

  2. In a pot, sauté chopped onion and garlic until soft.

Cook the curry

  1. Add the lamb and brown on all sides.

  2. Stir in curry powder, salt, and pepper.

  3. Add water to cover the lamb and simmer until tender.

Serve

  1. Serve with cooked 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 + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Garlic + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  4. Lamb + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,376 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Lamb + ricetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together439 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender through slow simmering in liquid.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced aroma and flavour that defines the dish.
Onion
Softens and adds sweetness and body to the base of the sauce.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma that deepens as it cooks gently with the onion.

The step that matters

Brown the lamb on all sides. Searing creates browned flavour through the Maillard reaction. Crowding the pot or skipping the sear leaves the meat grey and the curry tasting flat.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, garlic, pepper, rice):

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Eggplantfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, garlic, pepper, 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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