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Mr. Arnott’s Currie

A curry of finely chopped cabbage and sliced apples simmered with onions, garlic, butter, flour, gravy, and roasted fowl.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Mr. Arnott’s Currie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the outer leaves from the cabbage heart until it is the size of an egg, then chop it fine.

  2. Mix the chopped cabbage with sliced apples, lemon juice, black pepper, and curry powder.

Make the curry

  1. Combine fried onions, minced garlic, butter, flour, and gravy in a pot.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Add the cabbage mixture to the boiling pot.

  4. Let it stew together.

  5. If needed, add cayenne pepper for heat.

  6. Add the roasted fowl or your choice of meat to the pot. Stir well.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  3. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  4. Cabbage + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,001 recipes

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

  5. Cabbage + garlictop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together635 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

Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the dish and softens into a tender, stewed texture.
Apples
Add sweetness and acidity that balance the curry powder and pepper.
Onions
Fried brown, they build deep savoury flavour and body in the base.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so the curry clings to the meat and vegetables.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the curry powder's aroma through the dish.
Curry powder
Supplies the warm, aromatic spice character that defines the dish.

The step that matters

Stewing after adding the cabbage mixture. Once the cabbage goes into the boiling base, it needs gentle, sustained stewing so it softens and absorbs the spices. Boiling too hard or stopping early leaves the cabbage tough and the flavours raw, and flour-thickened sauces can scorch on the bottom of the pot if not stirred.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, lemon, pepper, onion, garlic, butter, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, lemon, pepper, onion, garlic, butter, flour. 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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