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A Bengal Currie

A curry made with fried onions, spices, gravy, and mutton simmered until tender.

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

Prepare the onions

  1. Slice 3 large onions.

  2. Fry the sliced onions in 2 ounces of butter.

  3. Remove the fried onions from the pan.

Make the curry base

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

  2. Add the butter from frying the onions and ½ cup of gravy.

  3. Stew for 10 minutes without burning.

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

Simmer the meat

  1. Add 1½ pounds of mutton or other meat.

  2. Simmer gently for 1 hour or until perfectly 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
Break down into a thick base that gives the curry body and sweetness.
Mutton or other meat
Becomes tender through long gentle simmering, supplying the main substance of the dish.
Butter
Carries the fried onion flavour and adds richness to the sauce.
Gravy
Provides the liquid that cooks the onions and meat into a sauce.

The step that matters

Stew the base without burning. Onions and spices scorch easily over direct heat, and scorched sugars and spices turn bitter and dark. Keeping the heat low and stirring preserves a mild, even flavour.

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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