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Indian Curry

A curry made with rabbit or fowl, onions, curry powder, sour milk, salt, lemon, and butter, simmered for 1½ hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Indian Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the rabbit or fowl and cut into neat joints.

  2. Chop the onions finely, reserving some to fry for garnish.

Make the curry

  1. Melt the butter in a pan until smoking.

  2. Fry the chopped onions until golden brown.

  3. Strain out the onions.

  4. Fry the curry powder for about a minute.

  5. Add the sour milk.

  6. Cook until it reduces to a thick sauce.

  7. Add the meat pieces.

  8. Fry for 5 minutes.

  9. Stir in the salt, fried onions, and a squeeze of lemon juice.

  10. Simmer gently for 1½ hours until tender.

Serve

  1. Serve the curry with fried onions sprinkled on top and boiled rice on the side.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Rabbit + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,292 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Rabbit + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together626 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Fowl or rabbit
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender during the long gentle simmer.
Sour milk
Its acidity helps tenderise the meat and thickens into the body of the sauce as it reduces.
Curry powder
Supplies the spice aroma and flavour, released more fully when fried briefly in fat.
Spanish onions
Break down into sweetness and body when fried to golden brown, adding depth to the sauce.
Butter or suet
Carries the spices and onions in fat, adding richness and helping flavours bloom.

The step that matters

Reducing the sour milk to a thick sauce. Sour milk must cook down slowly until thick before the meat goes in. If it is rushed, the sauce stays thin and can curdle or taste raw, so the sauce loses its body.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, milk, lemon, butter):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, milk, lemon, 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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