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Curry of Cold Meat

A curry made with cold meat, onions, butter, flour, curry powder, stock, apple, lemon juice, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Curry of Cold Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Melt the butter in a pan over medium heat.

  2. Fry the onion until nearly cooked but not browned.

  3. Add the curry powder and fry for a few more minutes.

  4. Stir in the lemon juice, then add the flour and mix well.

Make the curry

  1. Pour in the stock and add the chopped apple; stir until boiling.

  2. Boil for about five minutes, then add the cold meat.

  3. Simmer gently for 45 minutes.

Season and serve

  1. Add salt to taste 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Apple + lemontop 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).

Butter and flour 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

Cold meat
Forms the bulk of the dish and supplies its main savoury flavour as it simmers.
Onion
Cooked gently until soft, it adds sweetness and body to the sauce.
Curry powder
Blooming it in fat releases its aromatic compounds, giving the dish its characteristic flavour.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch absorbs liquid and swells during simmering.
Stock
Forms the liquid of the sauce and keeps the meat moist while it simmers.
Lemon juice
Its acidity brightens the flavour and balances the richness of the curry.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour into the fat and spices. Flour must be stirred evenly into the fat and spices before the stock goes in, otherwise it clumps and forms lumps that do not dissolve when the liquid is added.

Swap the apple

The recipe marks apple as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, onion, butter, flour, lemon):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, onion, butter, flour, lemon. 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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