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Vegetables, Curry Op

A curry of cauliflower, peas, carrots, turnip, potatoes, onion, celery, tomatoes, and stock served over rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Vegetables, Curry Op

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Divide cauliflower into small sprays.

  2. Dice carrots, turnip, potatoes, onion, and celery.

  3. Boil the vegetables in separate small pans according to their cooking times.

  4. Drain the vegetables when they are about half cooked to maintain their appearance.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan.

  2. Add the flour and curry powder to the butter. Fry slowly for 10 minutes.

  3. Add the sliced tomatoes and stock, stirring until boiling. Simmer gently for 15 minutes.

  4. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve back into the stewpan.

  5. Season to taste.

Combine and serve

  1. Add the lemon juice and cooked vegetables. Heat thoroughly.

  2. Serve in a border of nicely cooked 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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Cauliflower + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together286 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 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

Flour
Thickens the butter and curry powder into a smooth, body-giving sauce base.
Butter
Carries the curry powder and adds richness as the base for the sauce.
Curry powder
Provides the main spiced flavour and aroma of the sauce.
Stock
Forms the liquid of the sauce, adding savoury depth and moisture.
Tomatoes
Add acidity, moisture and body to the sauce as they break down.
Potatoes
Add starch and bulk, holding their shape while softening in the sauce.

The step that matters

Drain the vegetables at half cooked. Vegetables keep cooking from residual heat and in the hot sauce, so stopping them at about half cooked helps them keep their shape and colour instead of turning mushy when heated through.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cauliflower, carrot, turnip, potato, onion, celery, butter):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Lentilsfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cauliflower, carrot, turnip, potato, onion, celery, 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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