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Chitchkee Curry

A vegetable curry made with onions, butter, curry powder, gravy, rice, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,433 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Chitchkee Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curry

  1. Slice the onion and fry it in butter until brown.

  2. Mix the curry powder with a little gravy to form a paste, then stir the paste into the pan.

  3. Add the finely chopped vegetables.

  4. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  5. Simmer until thoroughly cooked.

Serve

  1. Serve with boiled rice.

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 + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Rice + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + ricetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Onion
Fried in butter until brown, it builds a sweet, savoury base for the curry.
Curry powder
Provides the main spice flavour and aroma once bloomed into a paste.
Butter
Carries the onion and spices, adding richness and helping the onion brown.
Gravy
Loosens the curry powder into a paste and adds liquid and savoury depth.
Cold vegetables
Make up the bulk of the dish and add texture and variety.

The step that matters

Frying the curry powder paste. Stirring the curry powder into a small amount of gravy first keeps it from clumping and scorching in the pan, so the spices spread evenly through the dish.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, rice, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, rice, pepper. 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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