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Mr. ARNOTt’s Currie

A curry made with cabbage, apples, onions, garlic, curry powder, and meat, served with rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 the cabbage and apples

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

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

Make the curry

  1. In a pot, heat the fried onions and minced garlic with butter and flour until bubbling.

  2. Add the cabbage mixture and gravy to the pot, and simmer together.

  3. If needed, add cayenne pepper for heat.

  4. Add the cooked meat of your choice and let it simmer until heated through.

Cook the rice and serve

  1. For the rice, soak it in water for at least 30 minutes, changing the water frequently.

  2. Boil a large pot of water and add the rice, cooking for 15 minutes.

  3. Strain the rice and serve it with the curry.

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
Provides the bulk of the curry and becomes tender and mild as it simmers.
Apples
Add sweetness and acidity that balance the heat of the curry spices.
Onions
Fried brown, they add deep savoury flavour and body to the base.
Flour
Cooked with butter, it forms a roux that thickens the curry sauce.
Gravy
Supplies liquid and meaty savoury depth that carries the whole curry.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries the spice flavours and softens the sauce.

The step that matters

Heating the flour with butter and onions. Flour must cook in the fat until bubbling so it loses its raw taste and thickens smoothly; adding liquid too early can leave lumps.

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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