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Dry Curry

A dry curry made with chicken or rabbit, onion, curry powder, butter, lemon juice, apple, and salt, served with boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and apple are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,551 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Dry Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and fry

  1. Cut the meat into small, square pieces.

  2. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  3. Fry the meat and onion in the butter for 15 minutes.

Simmer and serve

  1. Add the curry powder, lemon juice, and chopped apple; stir well.

  2. Cover the saucepan and reduce heat to low for 1.5 hours, stirring frequently.

  3. Ensure it cooks gently without boiling; add more butter if it seems dry.

  4. Season with salt to taste and serve with 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. Lemon + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  5. Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken or rabbit meat
Provides the protein that becomes tender during long, gentle cooking.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it fries, building the base flavour of the dish.
Curry powder
Supplies the spice flavour and aroma that define the dish.
Butter
Adds fat that carries flavour and keeps the dish moist while it cooks.
Apple
Adds mild sweetness and body that balances the spices.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness of the butter.

The step that matters

Keep the heat low and the pan covered during the long simmer. At a gentle simmer the meat becomes tender and the sauce stays moist. Boiling toughens muscle fibres and can reduce the liquid too fast, so the dish dries out and turns chewy.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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