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To Curry Cold Meat

A curry made from cold meat, onions, apple or rhubarb, curry powder, flour, and water, served with boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Meat and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,364 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

To Curry Cold Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the cold meat into pieces.

  2. Peel and slice the onions.

  3. Peel and chop the apple small.

  4. Grate the apple.

  5. Blend the curry powder and flour smoothly with a little water.

Make the curry

  1. Heat the dripping in a saucepan until hot and slightly smoking.

  2. Add the onions and fry until brown.

  3. Pour the mixture into the saucepan with the onions and apple.

  4. Stir until it boils.

  5. Remove the saucepan from heat and let it cool for a few minutes.

  6. Add the meat and cook very slowly for about 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve the curry with plain boiled rice around the dish.

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. Meat + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,364 recipes

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

  2. Flour + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Apple + oniontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,206 recipes

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

  4. Flour + appletop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,140 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Meat + appletop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together787 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold meat
Forms the main body of the curry and becomes tender during slow simmering.
Curry powder
Provides the main spiced aroma and flavour of the dish.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it heats and boils.
Onions
Browning in the dripping builds a sweet, savoury base flavour.
Apple or rhubarb
Adds sweetness or acidity that balances the spices.
Dripping
Fat for frying the onions, carrying flavour through the sauce.

The step that matters

Add the meat and cook very slowly for about 30 minutes.. The meat is already cooked, so it only needs gentle heat to warm through. Slow cooking keeps it tender, while a hard boil toughens proteins and can make the sauce catch on the pan.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, flour, onion. 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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