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Another Way to Make Currie Powder

A spice blend made from rice, coriander, cumin, mustard, cayenne, and turmeric.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Coriander and turmeric match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,253 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Another Way to Make Currie Powder

Ingredients

Directions

Toast the spices

  1. Pick the rice clean.

  2. Combine rice, coriander seed, cumin seed, and yellow mustard seed in a frying pan.

  3. Stir constantly over heat until hot, but do not brown.

Grind and store

  1. Grind the mixture in a pepper mill with cayenne and turmeric.

  2. Sift through muslin and grind the coarser part again until fine.

  3. Store in bottles with glass stoppers.

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. Coriander + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,253 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Mustard + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Rice + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,941 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Pepper + turmerictop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Coriander + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,949 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Toasted with the spices and ground in, adding body to the blend.
Coriander seed
Provides the warm, citrusy base flavour that most of the blend is built on.
Cumin seed
Adds an earthy, warm aroma that deepens when the seeds are toasted.
Yellow mustard seed
Contributes a sharp, pungent note that mellows with gentle heat.
Cayenne pepper
Supplies heat, giving the powder its pungent kick.
Turmeric
Adds earthy flavour and a deep yellow colour to the powder.

The step that matters

Stir constantly without browning the spices. Gentle heat releases the aromatic oils of the seeds. Scorching makes them bitter and dull the flavour of the finished powder, so the pan must be kept moving and stopped once hot.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, coriander, pepper, turmeric):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, coriander, pepper, 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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