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Brown Curry

A beef curry simmered with butter, onion, curry powder, stock, salt, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Brown Curry

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the sliced onion and fry for a few minutes.

  3. Add the beef and cook until browned.

  4. Sprinkle the curry powder over the meat and stir well.

  5. Pour in the stock and add salt and lemon juice.

  6. Simmer until the beef is 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. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Onion + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,646 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the main protein; browning it first builds savoury flavour and it becomes tender during simmering.
Butter
Carries the heat for frying and adds richness to the sauce.
Onion
Softens as it fries, adding sweetness and a base layer of flavour.
Curry powder
Blooms in the fat with the meat, releasing aroma and warm spice flavour.
Stock
Forms the liquid that simmers the beef and turns the spices into a sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, spiced sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer until the beef is tender. Beef made tough by searing needs long, gentle simmering so collagen breaks down; a hard boil toughens the meat and can dry out the sauce.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, butter, onion):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Mangofits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, onion. 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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