Skip to main content
Main

Curried Mince

A curry made from finely chopped cold meat, onion, butter, flour, curry powder, stock, and seasonings, served over boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Curried Mince

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the cooked cold meat finely.

Make the curry

  1. Fry the minced onion in butter or dripping until light brown.

  2. Stir in the flour and curry powder, then moisten with stock.

  3. Season with salt and pepper, then add the meat.

  4. Cook gently for about 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve the mince in the center of a plate surrounded by 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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked cold meat
Forms the main body of the dish, already cooked so it only needs to heat through.
Butter or dripping
Carries the curry powder and gives the onion a rich, browned flavour.
Onion
Adds sweetness and savoury depth as it browns in the fat.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a sauce that coats the meat.
Curry powder
Provides the spiced aroma and flavour that defines the dish.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour and curry powder into the fat before adding stock. Cooking the flour briefly in fat removes its raw taste and lets it thicken the liquid smoothly. Adding stock too quickly, or without stirring, can leave lumps, and the curry powder's aroma develops better when it is warmed in the fat first.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, butter, flour, pepper, 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.

You might also like

Rice FrittersRice Fritters84 recipesMeat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipesSteamed RiceSteamed Rice48 recipesMeatballsMeatballs37 recipes