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Curry of Cold Meat

A curry made with cold meat, onion, apple, chutney, and spices, served over rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Curry of Cold Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curry base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the minced onion, bacon, apple, and raisins and fry until golden brown.

  3. Stir in the flour and curry powder, mixing well.

  4. Add the stock and bring to a boil.

  5. Cook for about 30 minutes.

Add the meat and serve

  1. Add the cold meat, lemon juice, and chutney.

  2. Simmer gently until the meat is heated through.

  3. Serve the curry with freshly boiled rice, garnished with lemon shapes and hard-boiled eggs.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + carrottop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,351 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Apple + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Cold meat
Forms the bulk of the dish and is gently reheated in the sauce.
Onion
Softens and browns as a sweet base that builds flavour for the curry.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce when cooked with the butter.
Curry powder
Provides the spiced aroma and flavour that defines the dish.
Apple
Adds sweetness and a soft texture that balances the spices.
Bacon
Adds savoury fat and depth as it fries with the onion.

The step that matters

Frying the onion, bacon, apple and raisins until golden brown. Browning the onion and bacon develops rich, savoury flavours through the Maillard reaction and caramelisation. Pale frying gives a flat, raw-tasting curry base, so cook until the pieces are properly golden.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, onion, butter, flour, lemon, carrot, raisin):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, onion, butter, flour, lemon, carrot, raisin. 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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