Skip to main content
Main

Beef Curry, Madras

A beef curry with onions, apple, curry paste, spices, stock, and brown sauce, simmered for two hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Ketchup and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Beef Curry, Madras

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the onions into thin rings.

  2. Fry the sliced onions in hot butter until golden brown.

  3. Set the fried onions aside.

  4. Cut the steak into pieces.

  5. Roll the steak pieces in curry powder and spices.

Make the curry

  1. Add the rolled steak to the butter and fry well.

  2. Add the chopped apple, curry paste, stock, and half the lemon juice to the pan.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  4. Stir in the fried onions.

  5. Simmer the curry for two hours, replenishing stock as needed.

  6. Pass the sauce through a sieve.

  7. Return the sieved sauce to the pan with the meat, add brown sauce, remaining lemon juice, and salt to taste.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with plain rice or a special rice dish for curries.

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. Ketchup + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Ketchup + anchovytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together479 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Steak
Provides the meat, which becomes tender during the long slow simmer.
Onions
Fried to golden brown, they add sweetness and depth to the sauce.
Apple
Adds natural sweetness and body that softens into the sauce.
Curry paste
Supplies concentrated spice flavour and aroma to the whole curry.
Brown sauce
Adds savoury depth and colour to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer the curry for two hours, replenishing stock as needed.. Long, gentle simmering breaks down the meat's connective tissue so it becomes tender. If the liquid reduces too far, the meat can stick, scorch and turn tough, so stock must be topped up.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, lemon, mushroom, ketchup, anchovy, nutmeg, sauce):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, lemon, mushroom, ketchup, anchovy, nutmeg, sauce. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesMushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesApple SoupApple Soup33 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes