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Curries, Quoormah

A spiced meat curry made with ghee or butter, onions, coriander, garlic, chilies, cloves, cinnamon, cardamom, and water or broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Curries, Quoormah

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Cut the meat into small pieces and wash thoroughly.

  2. In a mortar, grind the coriander seeds, garlic, red chillies, salt, cloves, cinnamon, and cardamom pods separately.

  3. Mix the ground spices with the ghee or butter.

  4. Rub the spice mixture over the meat pieces.

Cook the curry

  1. In a saucepan, heat the ghee or butter and fry the sliced onions until brown.

  2. Add the marinated meat to the pan and stir well.

  3. Cover and simmer gently, adding water or broth if more gravy is needed.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cinnamon + cardamomtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,299 recipes

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

  3. Coriander + cardamomtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together872 recipes

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

  4. Clove + cardamomtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,114 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Meat
Provides the main protein that the spices season and the gravy surrounds.
Ghee or butter
Carries the spices and adds richness and fat for frying the onions.
Onions
Fried until brown, they add sweetness and depth to the gravy.
Coriander seeds
Contribute a warm, citrusy aroma that defines the spice blend.

The step that matters

Frying the sliced onions until brown. Onions browned in fat develop sweet, deep flavours through the Maillard reaction and caramelisation. Pale onions leave the gravy flat, while over-browned ones turn bitter.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, ghee, coriander, garlic, clove, cinnamon, cardamom):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, ghee, coriander, garlic, clove, cinnamon, cardamom. 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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