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Quoorma Curry

A mutton curry with ginger, spices, rice flour, ground almonds, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Quoorma Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the mutton into 1-inch squares, season with ginger and salt, and let marinate for 1 hour.

Make the curry

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan and fry the shallots and garlic until lightly browned.

  2. Add the rice flour, coriander, pepper, cardamom, and cloves to the pan and cook gently for 10 minutes.

  3. Pour in the stock, bring to a boil, then simmer gently for 15 minutes.

  4. Add the meat to the stewpan, cover, and let stand for 1 hour.

  5. Bring the mixture to a boil again and cook slowly for 1 hour or until the meat is tender.

Finish with almonds

  1. Soak the ground almonds in the milk, then strain the milk through fine muslin, pressing the almonds well.

  2. Add the strained milk to the stewpan, mix the turmeric with a little stock or water, and stir it in.

  3. Add sugar and salt to taste, and continue to cook.

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. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Shallot + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Shallot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Garlic + gingertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,402 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Provides the meat that becomes tender through long, slow simmering.
Butter
Carries the spices and browns the shallots, adding richness to the sauce.
Shallots or onions
Browned at the start, they add sweetness and body to the sauce.
Rice flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the stock.
Ground almonds
Milk soaked with almonds adds body and a creamy texture to the sauce.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mellows the spices in the sauce.

The step that matters

Bring to a boil again and cook slowly. Long, gentle simmering breaks down the connective tissue in mutton so it becomes tender. Boiling hard toughens the meat and can make the milk-based sauce separate.

Swap the garlic

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, butter, shallot, clove, ginger, rice, flour):

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, butter, shallot, clove, ginger, rice, flour. 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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