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Madras Curry

A veal curry with coconut, rice, and curry spices simmered in stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and coconut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,063 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Madras Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the coconut in the stock for about 15 minutes.

  2. Cut the veal into 1‑inch pieces and dredge in flour.

Brown and combine

  1. Fry the veal in half the butter until browned.

  2. Slice the onion and fry in the remaining butter.

  3. Combine the veal and onion in a pan and cover with strained stock.

Simmer and serve

  1. Mix the curry powder, curry paste, and rice with a little cold water, then stir into the stock.

  2. Simmer for 1.5 hours, season with salt and lemon juice.

  3. Serve hot 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. Rice + coconuttop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,063 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

  3. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Coconut + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Onion + coconuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,831 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Fillet of veal
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender during long gentle simmering.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and helps the veal and onion brown when fried.
Fine ground rice
Thickens the sauce as it simmers, giving it body.
Curry powder
Supplies the main spice flavour of the curry.
Grated coconut
Adds sweetness and a creamy, rich flavour to the stock.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma as it softens and browns in butter.

The step that matters

Mix the curry powder, paste and rice with cold water before stirring into the stock. Mixing the powders with cold water first keeps them from clumping, so the spices and rice blend evenly rather than forming lumps in the sauce.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, onion, rice, coconut, butter):

  1. Mangofits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Cherryfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, onion, rice, coconut, butter. 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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