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Madras Curry

A curry made with onions, butter, curry powder, cornflour, stock, meat, lemon juice, served with boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,433 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Madras Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Slice the onions and fry them in butter until light golden.

  2. Mix curry powder and cornflour in the pan with the onions and butter until smooth.

  3. Add the stock and bring to a simmer.

Cook and serve

  1. Cut the meat into 1-inch pieces and add to the pan.

  2. Let the mixture simmer gently for 1 hour.

  3. Before serving, squeeze in the lemon juice.

  4. Serve on a dish with a border of boiled rice.

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 + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Lemon + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Meat + ricetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + ricetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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 as it simmers slowly in the sauce.
Onions
Frying them until golden adds sweetness and a savoury base to the sauce.
Butter
Carries the curry powder's flavour and adds richness to the sauce.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced aroma and characteristic flavour of the dish.
Cornflour
Thickens the stock into a smooth, glossy sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, spiced sauce just before serving.

The step that matters

Mix curry powder and cornflour until smooth. Stirring the powders into the fat before adding liquid lets them bloom and disperse evenly, while the cornflour mixed in before the stock prevents lumps and helps the sauce thicken smoothly.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, meat, rice. 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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