Skip to main content
Main

A Common Indian Currie

A thick, slow‑cooked curry made with meat, onions, curry powder, butter, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 small cutlets or dice.

  3. Rub half of the mixed powder over the meat.

Brown the onions and meat

  1. Fry the sliced onions in butter until golden brown, then drain.

  2. Fry the meat lightly in more butter, then drain excess fat.

Stew and finish

  1. Place the meat in a clean saucepan and top with the fried onions.

  2. Add enough boiling water to almost cover the meat.

  3. Mix the remaining curry powder with a little broth or cold water.

  4. After the curry has stewed for a few minutes, pour in the mixed curry powder.

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

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 of the dish, becoming tender through long, gentle simmering.
Onions
Fried until golden, they add sweetness and depth of flavour to the sauce.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced flavour that defines the dish, with part bloomed onto the meat first.
Flour
Mixed with the spices, it helps thicken the sauce as it cooks.
Butter
Used for frying, it adds richness and helps the onions and meat brown.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until the meat is tender. Cooking over high heat toughens muscle fibres and can leave the meat dry. Slow, gentle simmering breaks down connective tissue, so the meat becomes tender and the sauce thickens evenly.

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.

More indian curry recipes

Sauce 4East 3Powder 3Soup 3with Rice 3 See all 40 →

You might also like

Meat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipesMeatballsMeatballs37 recipesMince MeatMince Meat37 recipesMeat CakesMeat Cakes35 recipes