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A Common Indian Currie

A hearty meat curry with onions, garlic, and spices simmered in butter and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

A Common Indian Currie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix curry powder, salt, and flour in a bowl.

  2. Cut the meat into thick cutlets or squares.

  3. Rub half of the spice mixture over the meat.

Fry the onions and meat

  1. Fry the sliced onions (and garlic or shallots if using) in butter until golden brown.

  2. Drain the fried onions on a sieve.

  3. Add more butter to the pan. Lightly fry the meat.

  4. Drain excess fat from the pan.

Stew and simmer

  1. Place the meat in a clean saucepan. Add the fried onions to the saucepan.

  2. Pour boiling water into the saucepan to almost cover the meat.

  3. Mix the remaining curry powder with a little broth or cold water. Add the mixture to the saucepan after the curry has stewed for a few minutes.

  4. Simmer gently until the meat is tender, about 1.25 to 2.5 hours depending on the type of meat.

  5. Optionally, add an acid apple or vegetables during cooking.

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

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Garlic + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Clove + shallottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Flour + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Clove + appletop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 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

Meat
Provides the main body and texture of the stew as it becomes tender during long simmering.
Curry powder
Supplies the main spice flavour and aroma of the dish.
Onions
Browning in butter adds sweetness and depth to the sauce.
Flour
Lightly coats the spiced meat and helps thicken the sauce.
Butter
Carries the spices and browns the onions and meat, adding richness.

The step that matters

Add the spice mixture after a brief stew. Curry powder left to simmer too long or added raw can taste harsh or raw-floury. Letting the spices cook briefly in fat and liquid softens their bitterness and deepens aroma, so the sauce tastes rounded.

Swap the clove

The recipe marks clove as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, flour, onion, garlic, shallot, butter, apple):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, flour, onion, garlic, shallot, butter, apple. 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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