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Vindaloo or Bindaloo

A spiced beef or pork curry marinated in vinegar and spices, cooked until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Vindaloo or Bindaloo

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the beef or pork into large square pieces.

  2. Soak the meat in vinegar with salt and the ground condiments overnight.

Cook

  1. Warm the ghee, lard, or mustard oil with the soaking ingredients.

  2. Add the marinated meat, peppercorns, and bay leaves to the warmed oil.

  3. Cook until the meat is tender.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Coriander + cumintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,866 recipes

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

  3. Cardamom + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,299 recipes

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

  4. Coriander + cardamomtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together872 recipes

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

  5. Clove + cardamomtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,114 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef or pork
Provides the protein that becomes tender during slow cooking in the spiced oil.
Vinegar
Acidity in the marinade helps tenderise the meat and carries the spices into it.
Ghee
Fat that carries the spice flavours and helps them bloom when warmed.
Ground chillies
Provides heat and colour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Soaking the meat overnight. The vinegar and spices need time to penetrate the meat; a short soak leaves the flavour on the surface and the meat less tender.

Swap the garlic

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ghee, ginger, coriander, cumin, clove, cardamom, cinnamon):

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ghee, ginger, coriander, cumin, clove, cardamom, cinnamon. 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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