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Indian Curry Savoury

A slow‑cooked Indian curry of onions, kidney beans, tomatoes, raisins, and chutney served with rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and rice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,065 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Indian Curry Savoury

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curry

  1. Slice the onions and fry them in oil until light brown.

  2. Add butter, curry, and a little more oil; cook with the onions for 10 minutes.

  3. Mix in kidney beans, strained tomatoes, raisins, chutney, and water if needed. Allow to boil slowly for 2 hours.

Serve

  1. Cook rice for 20 minutes until each kernel is separate.

  2. Serve the curry with spoonfuls of 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. Tomato + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

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

  2. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Raisin + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together565 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Kidney beans + tomatotop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together821 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Fried until light brown, they build the sweet, savoury base of the curry.
Kidney beans
Provide the main body and texture of the curry as they soften during slow simmering.
Strained tomatoes
Add liquid and acidity that help form the sauce around the beans.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries the curry flavour.
Raisins
Add gentle sweetness that balances the curry spices.

The step that matters

Slow boil for 2 hours. Simmering gently for a long time lets the kidney beans soften fully and the sauce thicken and blend. Boiling too hard can break up the beans and scorch the bottom of the pan, so keep the heat low and check the water level.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, butter, kidney beans, tomato, rice):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, kidney beans, tomato, rice. 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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