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Madras Curry

A veal curry with coconut, rice, and curry spices, simmered in stock and served over rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and coconut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,063 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Madras Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the coconut in the stock for about 15 minutes.

  2. Cut the veal into small pieces, about 1 inch square, and fry in half the butter until browned, dredging with flour first.

  3. Slice the onion and fry in the remaining butter.

Make the curry

  1. Combine the veal and onion in a pan and cover with the strained stock.

  2. Mix the curry powder, curry paste, and rice with a little cold water, then stir into the stock.

  3. Simmer for 1½ hours, season with salt and a squeeze of lemon juice.

Serve

  1. Serve hot 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. Rice + coconuttop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,063 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  3. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Coconut + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Onion + coconuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,831 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Becomes tender during long simmering, giving the curry its main body and chew.
Butter
Browns the veal and onion, adding richness and roasted flavour to the base.
Fine ground rice
Thickens the sauce as it cooks, giving it body.
Curry powder
Provides the main spice flavour of the curry.
Grated coconut
Adds moisture and subtle sweetness to the stock.

The step that matters

Browning the veal in butter. Flouring and frying the veal until browned builds deep, roasted flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pale, under-browned meat gives a flatter, less savoury curry.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Mangofits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Cherryfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, onion, rice, coconut, butter. 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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