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Kulleah Chowlahee

A spiced greens dish cooked with onions, garlic, coriander, ginger, cardamom, cloves, cinnamon, turmeric and ghee.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Kulleah Chowlahee

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the greens

  1. Pick out dirt and grass from the chowlahee greens and cut them into small pieces.

  2. Place the greens in a saucepan with water and boil for 15 minutes.

  3. Separate the greens from the water and slice the onions.

Fry the onions and garlic

  1. Fry the onions in ghee until golden.

  2. Add the fried onions to the greens with salt.

  3. Fry sliced garlic in ghee until brown.

  4. Add the fried garlic to the greens and mix well.

Add the spices

  1. Grind the coriander.

  2. Add the ground coriander, ginger, cardamom, cloves, cinnamon, and turmeric to the greens.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cardamom + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,299 recipes

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

  3. Coriander + cardamomtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together872 recipes

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

  4. Cardamom + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,114 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Ginger + cardamomtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,114 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

Chowlahee greens
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender after boiling.
Onions
Browning in ghee builds sweetness and a savoury base.
Ghee
Fat that fries the onions and garlic and carries the spice aromas.
Garlic
Frying adds a toasty, pungent aroma.
Green ginger
Adds a warm, fresh aroma and gentle heat.
Cardamom
Contributes a floral, aromatic note to the spice blend.

The step that matters

Frying the onions and garlic to golden or brown. Browning drives the Maillard reaction and caramelisation, which build sweetness and depth. Garlic that goes too dark turns bitter and can spoil the whole dish, so it needs watching closely.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ghee, garlic, coriander, ginger, cardamom, clove, cinnamon):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ghee, garlic, coriander, ginger, cardamom, clove, cinnamon. 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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