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Kulleah Bundgooday

A meat curry cooked in ghee with onions, garlic, ginger, turmeric, chickpea lentils, almonds, cream, saffron, and lime juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and turmeric match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,776 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Kulleah Bundgooday

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Heat ghee in a frying pan.

  2. Fry onions, garlic, and green ginger until brown.

  3. Set aside the fried mixture.

  4. Strain the ghee into another saucepan and keep it hot.

  5. Season the meat with some of the fried mixture, turmeric, and salt.

  6. Rub the mixture over the meat.

  7. Fry the meat in the hot ghee until browned.

Cook the meat

  1. Add chennah dhall and boil with remaining turmeric until dried up.

  2. Fry the mixture well.

  3. Add a little water and simmer until the meat is tender.

Finish with almond cream

  1. Grind the almonds with a little water.

  2. Mix the ground almonds with cream.

  3. Stir and pour the mixture over the meat.

  4. Add the reserved fried onions, ground saffron, and lime juice.

  5. Boil for a short time.

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. Ginger + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Clove + turmerictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,876 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Garlic + turmerictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,363 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Meat
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender through slow simmering in liquid.
Ghee
Carries heat for browning the meat and adds a rich, nutty fat flavour.
Onions
Browned slowly to build sweetness and deep savoury flavour in the base.
Blanched almonds
Ground and mixed with cream to thicken the sauce and add a mild, creamy body.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, silky texture.
Chennah dhall
Cooked down with the turmeric to add body and an earthy, nutty flavour.

The step that matters

Fry the meat in the hot ghee until browned. Searing meat in very hot fat creates browning through the Maillard reaction, building flavour. If the ghee is not hot or the pan is crowded, the meat steams and turns grey and bland.

Swap the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, ghee, onion, clove, garlic, ginger, turmeric):

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Lentilsfits better
  3. Cashew nutfits better
  4. Almondthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, ghee, onion, clove, garlic, ginger, turmeric. 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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