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Indian Curry and Curry Dishes

A simple Indian curry made with meat, onions, shallots, curry powder, stock, and served with rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,431 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Indian Curry and Curry Dishes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice

  1. Soak the rice in cold water for 3-4 hours.

  2. Boil and strain the rice carefully.

Make the curry

  1. Fry the meat in hot butter until lightly browned.

  2. Fry the chopped onion separately.

  3. Fry the chopped shallot separately.

  4. Add the onion and shallot to the meat.

  5. Place the meat and onion mixture in a shallow stewpan and add 1 cup of good stock.

  6. Add curry powder or paste to taste.

  7. Simmer until cooked through.

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 + shallottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,431 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Shallot + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together284 recipes

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

  4. Meat + ricetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,481 recipes

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

  5. Shallot + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together484 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

Meat
Browning in hot butter builds savoury flavour, and simmering makes it tender and cooked through.
Onion
Frying softens it and brings out sweetness and aroma that flavour the sauce.
Shallot
Frying adds a mild, sweet aroma that deepens the base of the curry.
Good stock
Provides the liquid for simmering, adding moisture and savoury flavour.
Curry powder or paste
Supplies the spice aroma and warm flavour that define the dish.

The step that matters

Browning the meat in hot butter. Frying the meat in hot butter until lightly browned drives the Maillard reaction, which creates savoury, complex flavour. Meat added to liquid without browning stays pale and tastes flatter.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, shallot, meat, rice):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, shallot, meat, 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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