Name: Curried Vegetables
Ingredients: 2 carrots, sliced; 2 turnips, sliced; 1 onion, sliced; 2 stalks of celery, sliced; 1 small apple, sliced; 2 tablespoons butter or dripping; 2 tablespoons curry powder; 1 cup milk or broth; Rice, prepared as for curry

Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Curried Vegetables

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curry

In a pan, heat the butter or dripping over medium heat.
Add the sliced carrots, turnips, onion, celery, and apple; fry until they absorb the fat.
Sprinkle the vegetables with curry powder and stir well.
Mix the curry powder with milk or broth and pour over the vegetables.
Simmer until the vegetables are tender and have absorbed the sauce.

Serve

Serve the curried vegetables with prepared rice in a divided dish.

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.

Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,173 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,418 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,585 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together21,601 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Carrots: Hold their shape while adding body and mild sweetness to the curry.
Turnips: Add firm texture and a slightly peppery sweetness as they soften.
Onion: Builds savory depth and sweetness as it cooks in the fat.
Butter or dripping: Carries the curry powder's aromatic compounds and helps the vegetables brown lightly.
Curry powder: Supplies the main spice aroma, and its fat-soluble flavors bloom when cooked in fat.
Milk or broth: Provides liquid that forms the sauce and is absorbed by the vegetables as they simmer.

The step that matters

Frying the vegetables in fat before adding liquid. Frying in butter or dripping lets the vegetables take up the fat and begin to brown, and it toasts the curry powder's fat-soluble spices so the flavor develops before the liquid dilutes it.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, onion, celery, butter, milk, rice):

Coconutfits better
Lemonfits better
Avocadofits better
Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, onion, celery, butter, milk, 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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Curried Vegetables