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A Bengal Currie

A curry of mutton with onions, garlic, turmeric, ginger, cayenne pepper, and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Turmeric and ginger 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 ↓

A Bengal Currie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curry base

  1. Slice and fry 3 large onions in 2 ounces of butter, then remove them from the pan.

  2. In a stewpan, combine 3 pounded onions and 1 small clove of pounded garlic with 2 teaspoons turmeric, 1 teaspoon ginger, 1 teaspoon salt, and 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper.

  3. Add the butter from frying the onions and ½ cup of gravy; let it stew for about 10 minutes without burning.

Simmer with the meat

  1. Stir in the fried onions and ½ pint more gravy.

  2. Add 1½ pounds of mutton or other meat and simmer gently for 1 hour or until tender.

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. Turmeric + gingertop 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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Fried and pounded onions build the body and thicken the sauce as they cook down.
Butter
Carries the spices and adds richness and a rounded fat flavour to the curry.
Mutton
Main protein that becomes tender through gentle, slow simmering in the gravy.
Turmeric
Provides the pale golden colour and an earthy, slightly bitter background flavour.
Gravy
Supplies the cooking liquid that carries flavour and keeps the meat moist during simmering.

The step that matters

Stewing the spiced onion base without burning. Pounded onions and spices scorch easily over direct heat, and scorched spices taste bitter. Gentle stewing in butter and gravy softens the onions and blends the flavours evenly before the meat goes in.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, clove, garlic, turmeric, ginger, pepper, mutton):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, clove, garlic, turmeric, ginger, pepper, mutton. 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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