Skip to main content
Main

Dry Curry

A dry curry made with meat, onion, butter, curry powder, lemon juice, and apple, simmered slowly and served with rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and apple are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,551 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Dry Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and fry

  1. Cut the meat into small, square pieces.

  2. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  3. Fry the meat and onion in the butter for 15 minutes.

Simmer

  1. Add the curry powder, lemon juice, and chopped apple. Stir well.

  2. Cover the saucepan and reduce heat to low.

  3. Cook for 1.5 hours, stirring frequently, ensuring it does not boil but cooks gently.

  4. Add more butter if it seems dry.

  5. Season with salt to taste.

Serve

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  5. Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 during the long, gentle cooking.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it fries in butter, building the base flavour.
Butter
Carries the curry flavours and adds richness, moisture and fat to the dish.
Curry powder
Supplies the spice blend that gives the dish its characteristic aroma and heat.
Apple
Adds a mild sweetness and fruity tang that balances the spices.

The step that matters

Keep the heat low so it does not boil. Gentle heat over a long cook lets the meat tenderise slowly while the liquid reduces without toughening the protein. A rolling boil toughens meat and can scorch the butter and spices on the pan base.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesMeat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipesMeatballsMeatballs37 recipesMince MeatMince Meat37 recipes