Name: Curry of Meat
Ingredients: ½ lb cold meat, diced; 1 onion, minced; 2 tablespoons butter; 1 teaspoon curry powder; salt to taste; 1 tablespoon milk; juice of ½ lemon

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Curry of Meat

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Melt the butter and fry the minced onion until brown.
Add the diced cold meat and stir over heat until well heated.
Sift the curry powder and salt over the meat, mixing well.
Pour the milk over the mixture and stir until the moisture has dried up.
Add a squeeze of lemon juice for flavor and serve hot.

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.

Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together42,912 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together19,053 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,227 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,594 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold meat: Forms the bulk of the dish and is heated through in the butter.
Onion: Browning in butter builds a sweet, savoury base for the curry.
Butter: Fat for frying the onion and carrying the curry flavour.
Curry powder: Supplies the spice aroma that defines the dish.
Milk: Adds a little moisture that is stirred until absorbed into the mixture.