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White Curry

A veal, fowl, or rabbit curry cooked with butter, onion, apple, almonds or coconut, curry powder, lemon, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

White Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the meat and sauce

  1. Cut the veal into small, square pieces, or cut the fowl or rabbit into joints.

  2. Fry the meat in butter without browning.

  3. Remove the meat from the pan.

  4. Fry the onion in the same pan without browning.

  5. Add the curry powder to the onion and fry briefly.

  6. Stir in the flour.

  7. Add the hot water, mixing until boiling.

  8. Add the meat and chopped apple.

  9. Simmer gently for about 1 hour until the meat is tender.

  10. Season with salt.

  11. Add more lemon juice.

Make the almond milk

  1. To prepare almond milk, blanch the almonds.

  2. Chop the blanched almonds.

  3. Pound the chopped almonds with a little water.

  4. Soak the almond mixture for 10 minutes.

  5. Strain the almond milk.

Serve

  1. 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. Almond + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + almondtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,769 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

Veal
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender through gentle simmering.
Butter
Carries the frying of the meat and onion, adding richness and flavour.
Onion
Builds a sweet, savoury base for the sauce when softened without browning.
Flour
Thickens the hot water into the body of the curry sauce.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced aroma and flavour that define the dish.
Almonds
Make the almond milk, adding body, mild sweetness and a creamy note to the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until the meat is tender. A rolling boil toughens meat proteins and can break up the sauce, so a gentle simmer lets connective tissue soften slowly.

Swap the apple

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

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

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