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Brown Curry

A meat curry with onions, butter, curry powder, lemon juice, apple, and stock, simmered until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Meat and mutton work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 936 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Brown Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the meat into small, square pieces and slice the onion.

Make the curry

  1. Heat the butter in a saucepan, add the onion and meat, and fry over medium heat until light brown.

  2. Add the curry powder and fry for a few minutes, then add the lemon juice.

  3. Stir in the chopped apple and stock, bring to a boil, then simmer gently for 1-2 hours until the meat is tender.

Serve

  1. Season with salt and serve with boiled 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. Meat + muttontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together936 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

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

  3. Butter + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Meat
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender through long, gentle simmering.
Butter
Carries the curry powder's flavour and helps the onion and meat brown.
Curry powder
Supplies the spice blend that gives the dish its characteristic aroma and flavour.
Stock or water
Provides the liquid that simmers the meat until tender and forms the sauce.
Apple
Adds natural sweetness that balances the spices.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the curry.

The step that matters

Simmering the meat gently. Simmering gently rather than boiling hard keeps the meat tender and prevents the liquid from reducing too quickly. Tough cuts need time at low heat for connective tissue to break down into gelatin.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, mutton, onion, butter, apple):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, mutton, onion, butter, apple. 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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