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Beef, Curried

A pastry filled with curried beef, coated in egg and breadcrumbs, then fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,062 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Beef, Curried

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Heat butter in a small saucepan and fry onion slightly.

  2. Stir in flour, add stock, and bring to a boil.

  3. Add chopped beef, parsley, and nutmeg; season to taste and mix well.

  4. Transfer mixture to a plate and let it cool.

Shape the croquettes

  1. Roll out pastry to 1/8 inch thick and cut into rounds 1½ to 2 inches in diameter.

  2. Place a small amount of meat mixture on one half of each round.

  3. Moisten edges of pastry, fold other half over, and press edges together to seal.

Coat and fry

  1. Brush croquettes with beaten egg, roll them in crushed vermicelli or breadcrumbs, and fry in hot fat until golden brown.

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. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Beef
Forms the savoury body of the filling.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour to the onion before the flour is added.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a binding base for the filling.
Beef stock
Moistens the filling and carries the beef's savoury flavour.
Egg
Brushed on the croquettes to help the crumb coating adhere and brown.
Vermicelli or breadcrumbs
Forms a crisp outer coating that browns when fried.

The step that matters

Let the filling cool before shaping. A hot, loose filling softens the pastry and can burst the seal during folding and frying. Cooling lets the mixture firm up so it holds its shape and stays sealed.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, butter, flour, parsley, nutmeg, egg):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, flour, parsley, nutmeg, egg. 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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