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Beef Curry

A beef curry with eggs and toast served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Ketchup and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Beef Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curry

  1. Cut the meat into small dice.

  2. Melt the butter in a stewpan and fry the onion until lightly browned.

  3. Sprinkle in the flour and brown slightly, then add the gravy and boil for 2-3 minutes.

  4. Add the meat, mushroom ketchup, Worcestershire sauce or vinegar, and season with salt and pepper.

  5. Let the pan stand where it will stay hot without boiling for 10-15 minutes.

Prepare the eggs and toast

  1. Meanwhile, poach the eggs and trim them into a round shape.

  2. Cut the toast into small triangular shapes.

Serve

  1. When ready to serve, turn the meat onto a hot dish, place the eggs on top, and surround with the pieces of toast.

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. Ketchup + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

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

  4. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Roast beef
Provides the main meat, which is already cooked and only needs to heat through in the sauce.
Flour
Browned with the butter and onion, it thickens the gravy into a smooth sauce.
Butter
Fat for frying the onion and browning the flour, adding richness to the sauce.
Gravy
Forms the liquid base of the curry, which thickens as it boils.
Eggs
Poached and served on top, adding richness and a soft, creamy yolk to the dish.

The step that matters

Let the pan stand without boiling. Holding the curry just below a boil lets the meat warm through gently and the sauce settle. A hard boil toughens the meat and can make the sauce break or reduce unevenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, egg, butter, flour, mushroom, ketchup, sauce):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, egg, butter, flour, mushroom, ketchup, sauce. 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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