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A curry of steak or veal cutlets with onions, apple, curry powder, flour, butter, water or gravy, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Curries

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the onions and apple.

  2. Fry the sliced onions and apple in the butter until light brown.

  3. Cut the meat into neat squares.

  4. Mix the curry powder, flour, and salt on a plate. Rub each piece of meat into the mixture.

  5. Fry the meat quickly.

Cook and serve

  1. Transfer the fried meat to a saucepan with the hot water or gravy. Simmer gently for 1.5 hours.

  2. Add the lemon juice.

  3. Serve in a meat 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

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

  3. Butter + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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

Steak or veal cutlets
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender during slow simmering.
Onions
Browning in butter builds sweetness and savoury depth that supports the curry sauce.
Apple
Adds natural sweetness and body that softens into the sauce as it cooks.
Curry powder
Provides the spiced aroma and flavour that defines the dish.
Flour
Coats the meat and thickens the liquid into a sauce.

The step that matters

Fry the meat quickly. Searing the coated meat briefly browns its surface and builds flavour. Frying too long toughens the meat before the slow simmer, and the flour coating can scorch.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, onion, flour, lemon. 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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