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Beef, Pressed

A beef curry with apple, simmered in a sauce of butter, onion, flour, curry powder, stock, lemon juice, served over rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Beef, Pressed

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Heat the butter or dripping in a saucepan.

  2. Fry the onion until brown.

  3. Add the flour and curry powder, stir, and cook for 5 minutes.

  4. Add the apple and stock, and stir until boiling.

  5. Cover and simmer for about 30 minutes.

  6. Strain the mixture and return it to the saucepan.

  7. Bring nearly to a boil, add lemon juice, and season to taste.

Add the meat and serve

  1. Add the meat and let it sit in the hot sauce for about 20 minutes without boiling.

  2. Serve in a border of 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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter or dripping
Carries flavour and helps the onion brown.
Onion
Browning builds a sweet, savoury base for the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot liquid.
Curry powder
Releases aromatic spices when fried, giving the dish its characteristic flavour.
Apple
Softens while simmering, adding mild sweetness and body to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, spiced sauce.

The step that matters

Let the meat sit in the sauce without boiling. Boiling toughens meat and can make it dry and stringy. Holding the sauce just below a boil lets the meat warm through gently and stay tender.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, flour, lemon, pepper, 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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