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To Make a Curry

A curry made with onions, thyme, marjoram, carrot, butter, curry powder, and fresh meat, served with rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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To Make a Curry

Why it works: Thyme and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

To Make a Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Combine sliced onions, thyme, marjoram, grated carrot, and ½ cup butter in a saucepan. Stew until brown, careful not to burn.

  2. Add gravy as needed. If using fresh meat, fry it until brown before adding to the saucepan.

  3. Mix in ½ cup butter, 1 tablespoon curry powder, and enough flour to thicken.

  4. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt, then add everything to the saucepan.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil for half an hour, then remove the herbs.

  2. Boil rice for half an hour until dry, serve separately.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Thyme + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Marjoram + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together687 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Thyme + carrottop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Marjoram + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Break down slowly while browning, adding sweetness and savory depth to the curry.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the onions brown in the saucepan.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so the curry clings to the meat and rice.
Curry powder
Provides the warm, aromatic spice flavor that defines the dish.
Fresh meat
Supplies the main protein; frying it brown first builds flavor through browning.

The step that matters

Stew the onions until brown, without burning. Onions browned slowly develop deep sweetness through caramelization, but scorched onions turn bitter and can taint the whole curry.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (thyme, marjoram, carrot, butter, meat, flour, pepper):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against thyme, marjoram, carrot, butter, meat, flour, pepper. 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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