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Curried Beef

A beef stew with onions, apple, curry powder, and chutney, served over boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and beef 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 ↓

Curried Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curry base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Fry the onions and apple until browned.

  3. In a bowl, mix curry powder, flour, sugar, salt, and stock until smooth.

  4. Add the mixture to the saucepan and let it simmer for about 1 hour.

  5. Stir in chutney and vinegar.

Cook and serve

  1. Add the beef and simmer for another hour or until tender.

  2. Serve in a hot dish with boiled rice around it.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Apple + ricetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,311 recipes

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

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
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender through long, slow simmering.
Onions
Soften and brown during frying, adding sweetness and depth to the sauce.
Curry powder
Supplies the spice and aroma that define the dish.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth, lightly body sauce.
Stock
Provides the liquid that carries flavour and keeps the beef moist while it simmers.
Chutney
Adds sweetness and fruity tang to balance the spices.

The step that matters

Simmering the beef until tender. Beef is tough until its connective tissue breaks down during long, gentle simmering. Cooking too hard or too briefly leaves it chewy, so keep the liquid at a gentle simmer for the full time.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, flour, sugar, vinegar, beef, 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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