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Toast Currie

A fried bread topped with a spiced tomato and curry sauce, garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cardamom match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,114 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Toast Currie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curry mixture

  1. In a pan, melt the butter and fry the onion, garlic, bay leaves, and cloves until brown.

  2. Add the curry powder and stir well.

  3. Mix in the tomato conserve, tarragon vinegar, and cardamom seeds.

  4. Let the mixture simmer gently for about 15 minutes until thick.

Assemble and serve

  1. Spread the mixture thickly on fried bread rounds.

  2. Garnish each piece with chopped parsley and stack them with parsley tufts in between.

  3. Serve hot or cold.

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Garlic + tomatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Clove + tarragontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together548 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Tomato + tarragontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together391 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Fat that carries the aromatics and gives the base a rich, browned flavour.
Onion
Softens and browns during frying, adding sweetness and savoury depth to the base.
Tomato conserve
Provides sweetness, acidity and body, thickening into a spreadable mixture as it simmers.
Curry powder
Supplies the warm spice aroma that defines the dish's flavour.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet tomato and spice flavours.

The step that matters

Simmering until thick. Simmering gently reduces water in the tomato conserve so the mixture thickens enough to spread without running off the bread. Too little cooking leaves it runny and soggy; too hard a boil can scorch the sugars in the conserve.

Swap the cardamom

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, clove, garlic, butter, tomato, tarragon, vinegar):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Cardamomthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, clove, garlic, butter, tomato, tarragon, vinegar. 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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