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Curry of Cold Beef

A curry made with cold roast beef, stock, butter, flour, curry powder, curry paste, apple, onions, lemon juice, and rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Curry of Cold Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Put the bones and brown parts of the meat into a saucepan, cover with cold water, and boil for at least 2 hours.

  2. Strain and reserve the stock.

  3. Cut the meat into slices about 1 inch thick and 1 inch square.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan.

  2. Fry the onions for 2-3 minutes.

  3. Add the curry powder and flour.

  4. Fry gently for 5 minutes.

  5. Add the stock, curry paste, chopped apple, and salt to taste.

  6. Stir until the sauce boils.

  7. Simmer gently for 1 hour.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the meat.

  2. Cover closely. Let it sit for 1 hour to absorb the flavor of the sauce.

  3. Arrange the meat in a pyramidal form on a hot dish.

  4. Season the sauce to taste. Add the lemon juice.

  5. Strain over the meat.

  6. Serve the rice separately.

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

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

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

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

  3. Beef + ricetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,265 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  4. Lemon + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

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

  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

Cold roast beef
Provides the main protein; gently reheating in the sauce keeps it tender and moist.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they fry, forming the base flavor of the sauce.
Butter
Carries the curry spices and adds richness to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce with the fat when cooked together.
Curry powder
Supplies the main spice aroma, bloomed in fat to release its flavor.
Sour apple
Adds acidity and a fruity tang that balances the rich, spiced sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer gently after the sauce boils. A hard boil can make the sauce reduce unevenly, scorch on the bottom, and toughen the meat once it is added. A gentle simmer keeps the sauce smooth and the beef tender.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, flour, onion, lemon, rice. 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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