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Indian Curry

A curry made with onions, potato, butter, coconut, chutney, curry powder, lemon juice, pickle, apple, ham or bacon fat, and optional pre‑cooked meat or fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Indian Curry

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Peel and slice the onions, then cook them in a saucepan with butter until tender and brown.

  2. Add the diced potato and cook with the onions.

  3. Stir in the grated coconut, chutney, curry powder, lemon juice, pickle, and apple.

  4. Pass the ham or bacon fat through a sieve and add it to the mixture.

  5. Add the pre-cooked meat, vegetables, egg, or fish to the curry 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.

  1. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Potato + coconuttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together375 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Butter + coconuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Potato + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Coconut + appletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together274 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylethanol (rose, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Cooked until tender and brown, they form the sweet, savoury base of the curry.
Potato
Cooked with the onions, it adds body and soaks up the curry flavour.
Curry powder
Supplies the spice blend that gives the dish its characteristic aroma and flavour.
Coconut
Adds richness and a mild sweetness that softens the heat of the spices.
Chutney
Contributes sweetness and acidity that balance the curry powder.

The step that matters

Brown the onions until tender. Slowly cooking sliced onions in butter until golden builds sweetness and depth. Rushing this step leaves them pale and sharp, which weakens the base flavour of the whole curry.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, potato, butter, coconut, apple, ham):

  1. Pineapplefits better
  2. Mangofits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, potato, butter, coconut, apple, ham. 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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