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Curry, Indian. No. 1

A curry stew made with meat, onions, garlic, almonds, chestnuts, curry powder, gravy, and butter.

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 ↓

Curry, Indian. No. 1

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curry

  1. Fry the meat with onions, garlic, almonds, and chestnuts.

  2. Add curry powder, gravy, and butter to the stewpan.

  3. Let it stew gently until the gravy thickens and nearly evaporates.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with plenty of rice and pickles.

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. Almond + chestnuttop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together130 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Chicken + garlictop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,850 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-ethyl-2,5-dimethylpyrazine (roasted, nutty).

  4. Garlic + chestnuttop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together348 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Soften and sweeten as they fry, forming the flavour base of the curry.
Almonds
Ground or fried, they add body and a mild nutty thickness to the sauce.
Sweet chestnuts
Their starch and soft texture add body and a mild sweetness to the stew.
Curry powder
Blooms in the hot fat and gives the dish its characteristic spiced aroma.
Strong gravy
Provides the liquid that stews down, carrying flavour and thickening as it reduces.
Butter
Adds fat that carries the spice aroma and gives the sauce a rich mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Stewing until the gravy thickens and nearly evaporates. Cooking gently and long enough lets the liquid reduce and concentrate, so the sauce thickens and the spices and fat bind into it. Stopping too early leaves it thin and watery, while boiling hard can scorch the butter and solids on the base of the pan.

Swap the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, onion, garlic, chestnut, butter):

  1. Cashew nutfits better
  2. Sesamefits better
  3. Lentilsfits better
  4. Almondthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, onion, garlic, chestnut, 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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