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Mr. ARNOTT’s Currie

A curry of finely chopped cabbage, sliced apples, and curry powder simmered with onions, garlic, butter, and gravy, served over 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

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

  2. Chop the cabbage finely.

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

Make the curry

  1. Heat the fried onions and minced garlic with butter in a pot.

  2. Stir in flour and gravy until boiling.

  3. Add the cabbage mixture to the boiling pot and simmer.

  4. Adjust heat with cayenne pepper if needed.

Cook the rice and serve

  1. Soak the rice in water for at least 30 minutes, changing the water frequently, in a separate pot.

  2. Boil a large pot of water and add the rice.

  3. Cook for 15 minutes, then strain and serve.

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 curry and turns soft and tender as it simmers.
Apples
Soften during cooking and add a mild sweetness that balances the curry spices.
Onions
Frying them brown builds a deep, sweet, savory base for the curry.
Flour
Starch thickens the gravy so the curry becomes a coating sauce rather than thin liquid.
Butter
Adds fat that carries curry flavor and gives the sauce a rich mouthfeel.
Gravy
Supplies the main liquid and savory meaty depth to the curry.

The step that matters

Stir in flour and gravy until boiling. Flour must be fully mixed into the butter and then the gravy so its starch disperses evenly. Stirred well, the starch thickens the sauce smoothly; if it clumps, the curry will be lumpy.

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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