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A Currie of Meat and Vegetables

A curry of meat, onions, and unripe apple simmered in gravy with curry powder, served over rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,433 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

A Currie of Meat and Vegetables

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Fry the meat slowly until it is the same color, then drain the fat.

  2. Place the meat in a clean stewpan and add the onions.

  3. Cover with hot gravy and let it stew for a little while.

Make the curry

  1. Mix 1 tablespoon of currie powder with 2 tablespoons of gravy and stir into the pan.

  2. Add a large unripe apple, sliced thin, and let it stew for 1 to 2 hours until the meat is tender.

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

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

  2. Meat + ricetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,481 recipes

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

  3. Apple + ricetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,311 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Onion + appletop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,206 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Meat
Becomes tender through long stewing, providing the main substance of the dish.
Onions
Add sweetness and savory depth as they soften in the stewed gravy.
Hot gravy
Provides the liquid that stews the meat and carries the curry flavor.
Currie powder
Supplies the aroma and spiced flavor that defines the curry.
Unripe apple
Adds tartness that balances the richness and spice of the curry.

The step that matters

Frying the meat until evenly colored. Browning the meat creates deeper flavor through the Maillard reaction, and draining the fat keeps the finished curry from tasting greasy. Frying slowly prevents scorching.

Swap the apple

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

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

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

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