Skip to main content
Main

Curried Mutton or Lamb

A curry of sliced cooked mutton or lamb with onion, coconut, chutney, curry powder, and stock, served over boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Curried Mutton or Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the cooked meat into neat slices, trimming off excess fat.

  2. Peel and finely chop the onion.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a pan and fry the onion until lightly colored.

  2. Mix the flour and curry powder, then stir into the butter and onion mixture, cooking for a few minutes.

  3. Add the grated coconut and gradually moisten with the stock, bringing to a boil.

  4. Skim the surface, reduce heat, and simmer for five minutes.

  5. Add the meat slices and finely chopped chutney to the sauce.

  6. Season with salt, paprika, and lemon juice.

  7. Cover the pan and heat until boiling, then reduce heat and simmer gently for 20 to 25 minutes.

Serve

  1. Prepare the rice by washing, boiling, and draining it, then dry it in a warm oven.

  2. Serve the rice in a border on a dish with the meat and sauce in the center.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Coconut + ricetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,063 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

Cooked meat
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender as it simmers in the sauce.
Butter
Carries the curry flavor and enriches the sauce with fat.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with the butter and onion.
Curry powder
Provides the dominant spiced aroma of the dish.
Coconut
Adds sweetness and body to the sauce.
Chutney
Adds sweet and tangy flavor that balances the curry spices.

The step that matters

Thickening the flour into the butter and onion. Flour must cook in the hot fat for a few minutes before liquid is added; this cooks out its raw starchy taste and lets it thicken the sauce smoothly without lumps.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, onion, coconut, 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

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesRice FrittersRice Fritters84 recipesMeat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipesSteamed RiceSteamed Rice48 recipes