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Kulleah Bundgooday

A spiced meat curry with chickpeas, almonds, cream, saffron, and lime, cooked in ghee.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Turmeric and chickpea match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 233 recipes. Both carry linalool, which smells floral, citrus. The science ↓

Kulleah Bundgooday

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Heat ghee in a frying pan and sauté onions, garlic, and ginger until browned; keep aside.

  2. In another saucepan, heat the strained ghee.

Cook the meat

  1. Season the meat with curry powder, onions, ginger, and garlic.

  2. Rub the mixture over the meat.

  3. Add chenna dal and boil with the remaining mixture until dried.

  4. Fry well, then add water and simmer until the meat is tender.

Finish

  1. Grind almonds with rice water and mix with cream.

  2. Pour over the meat.

  3. Add the fried onions, ground saffron, and lime juice.

  4. Boil for a short time.

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. Turmeric + chickpeatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together233 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  2. Ginger + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Chickpea + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together73 recipes

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

  5. Garlic + chickpeatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together813 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Meat
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender through slow simmering in liquid.
Chenna dal
Thickens the mixture as it boils down and adds body to the gravy.
Almonds
Ground into the sauce to add richness and a thicker, creamier texture.
Cream
Adds fat and smoothness, softening the sharpness of the spices.
Onions
Browning them builds sweetness and deep savoury flavour in the base.
Lime juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, spiced sauce at the end.

The step that matters

Fry well, then add water and simmer until the meat is tender. Frying the spiced mixture drives off moisture and deepens flavour before liquid is added. Simmering gently afterwards lets connective tissue in the meat break down, so the meat becomes tender rather than tough.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, garlic, ginger, ghee, turmeric, chickpea, almond):

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Welsh onionfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, garlic, ginger, ghee, turmeric, chickpea, almond. 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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