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A Common Indian Currie

A simple Indian curry made with meat, curry powder, onions, and butter, simmered until tender.

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 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. Drain the fried onions on a sieve.

  2. Add more butter to the pan and lightly fry the meat. Drain excess fat from the pan.

Simmer

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

  2. Pour in enough boiling water to almost cover the meat.

  3. Mix the remaining curry powder with a little broth or cold water. Add the mixed curry powder to the curry. Stir well.

  4. 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 protein, which becomes tender through long, gentle simmering.
Onions
Browning in butter adds sweetness and depth to the sauce.
Curry powder
Supplies the spice flavour that defines the dish.
Flour
Mixed with the curry powder, it helps thicken the sauce and coat the meat.
Butter
Carries the frying of the onions and meat, adding richness and browning.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until the meat is tender. Cooking at a gentle simmer rather than a hard boil lets collagen and connective tissue break down slowly, so the meat becomes tender without toughening or drying out.

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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