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Curried Salt Beef

A stew of salt beef, potatoes, onions, and curry simmered in butter and water with coconut.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Curried Salt Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the meat into small pieces.

  2. Scald the meat.

  3. Peel and wash the potatoes, then cut them into small dice.

  4. Peel and chop the onion.

Make the curry

  1. Heat the butter or dripping in a pan.

  2. Add the flour and stir until lightly browned.

  3. Add the curry powder and stir well.

  4. Pour in the water.

  5. Add the coconut, onion, meat, and potatoes.

  6. Season with vinegar or lemon juice and sugar, and add salt if necessary.

  7. Simmer gently for 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve garnished with lemon slices cut into quarters.

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. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  3. Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Potato + coconuttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together375 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Butter + coconuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Salt beef
Provides the main savoury meat flavour and substance of the curry.
Flour
Thickens the liquid and, when browned, adds a toasted, nutty flavour to the sauce.
Curry powder
Supplies the spice blend that gives the dish its characteristic aroma and flavour.
Potatoes
Add body and starch that soften during simmering, helping thicken the sauce.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aromatic depth as it softens in the sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the flour. Flour must be stirred until lightly browned before liquid goes in. Cooking it in fat removes raw, pasty taste and deepens colour, and stopping too early or burning it changes the flavour of the sauce.

Swap the coconut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, potato, butter, flour, onion, vinegar, sugar):

  1. Avocadofits about as well
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Cherryfits about as well
  4. Coconutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, potato, butter, flour, onion, vinegar, sugar. 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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