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White Curry

A curry made with veal, onion, apple, curry powder, butter, flour, almonds or coconut, milk, water, lemon, and salt, simmered for an hour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

White Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Cut the veal into small square pieces, or cut the fowl or rabbit into joints.

  2. Fry the meat in butter without browning, then remove it from the pan.

Make the sauce

  1. Fry the onion in the same pan without browning, then add the curry powder and fry for a minute.

  2. Squeeze in a few drops of lemon juice and stir in the flour.

  3. Add the almond or coconut milk and stir until boiling.

Simmer and serve

  1. Return the meat to the pan, add the chopped apple, hot water, and salt.

  2. Allow to simmer gently for about an hour until the meat is tender.

  3. Season with more salt and lemon juice, 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. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + almondtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,769 recipes

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

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

Veal, fowl or rabbit
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender through long gentle simmering.
Butter
Carries the curry flavour and enriches the sauce with fat.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced aroma and flavour that define the dish.
Flour or creme de riz
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the milk.
Almond or coconut milk
Forms the creamy liquid base of the sauce and adds sweetness.
Onion
Adds savoury body and sweetness to the sauce as it softens.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour before adding the milk. Flour must be stirred into the fat and aromatics so it can disperse evenly; adding milk afterwards and stirring until boiling lets the starch thicken smoothly rather than forming lumps.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, onion, butter, flour, almond, lemon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, onion, butter, flour, almond, 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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