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Ball Curry

A curry featuring meatballs made from minced meat, ginger, allspice, onion, garlic, and egg yolk, simmered in coconut or milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Ball Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meatballs

  1. Mince the meat and set aside.

  2. Grind the ginger, allspice, salt, onion, and garlic into a paste.

  3. Mix the paste with the minced meat and egg yolk.

  4. Form the mixture into balls the size of large cherries.

  5. Fry the balls in ghee, butter, dripping, or lard until cooked.

  6. Remove the balls and fry the sliced onion in the same grease until brown.

Make the curry

  1. Add curry powder to the onion and fry briefly.

  2. Pour in the cocoanut or cow’s milk and bring to a boil.

  3. Add the fried balls, cover, and simmer for 10 minutes.

  4. Uncover and stir occasionally until the gravy thickens.

  5. Stir in tamarind water, vinegar, or lemon juice, 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. Ginger + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,402 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Ginger + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,595 recipes

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

  5. Allspice + garlictop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,379 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Minced meat
Forms the body of the meatballs and gives them their savoury, meaty flavour.
Egg yolk
Binds the paste and meat together so the balls hold their shape.
Onion
Softens and browns in the fat, adding sweetness and depth to the gravy.
Curry powder
Fried briefly in the onion to bloom its aroma before the milk is added.
Cocoanut or cow’s milk
Forms the liquid base of the gravy, which thickens as it simmers.
Tamarind water, vinegar, or lemon juice
Adds acidity at the end to brighten the rich, creamy gravy.

The step that matters

Stir the gravy as it thickens. Once the milk is simmering, the gravy can scorch on the bottom of the pan or split if it boils hard. Gentle, occasional stirring keeps the sauce smooth as the milk reduces and thickens.

Swap the allspice

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, ginger, onion, garlic, egg, ghee, milk):

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, ginger, onion, garlic, egg, ghee, milk. 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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