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A Common Indian Currie

A curry made with meat, curry powder, onions, and optional garlic or shallots, served with seafood.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

A Common Indian Currie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix the curry powder, salt, and flour together.

  2. Cut the meat into thick small cutlets or squares and rub half of the mixed powder over it.

Cook

  1. Fry the sliced onions (and garlic or shallots if using) gently until golden brown.

  2. Drain the onions on a sieve.

  3. Add more butter to the pan and lightly fry the meat until cooked through.

  4. Serve with prawns, shrimps, or boiled lobster flesh heated through in the curry sauce.

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

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Garlic + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Clove + shallottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Flour + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + shallottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,431 recipes

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

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 firms and cooks through during frying.
Curry powder
Supplies the main spice flavour and aroma of the dish.
Onions
Browning in butter builds sweetness and savoury depth in the sauce.
Flour
Lightly coats the meat and helps thicken the curry sauce.

The step that matters

Frying the onions gently until golden brown. Frying slowly lets the sugars in the onions caramelise evenly, building sweetness and colour. Too much heat scorches them, leaving a bitter taste that spoils the sauce.

Swap the clove

The recipe marks clove as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, flour, onion, garlic, shallot, butter):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, flour, onion, garlic, shallot, 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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