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Ingredients for Making a Curry

A spice blend with chillies, onions, coconut, nuts, and seeds cooked together.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Turmeric and cumin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,698 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Ingredients for Making a Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the chillies and onions.

  2. Grind the coriander, cumin, cardamom, fenugreek, dry ginger, black pepper, cloves, mace, and cinnamon into a fine powder.

Make the curry base

  1. Mix the ground spices with the chopped chillies and onions.

  2. Add the grated coconut, chironjie nuts, almonds, and poppy seeds to the mixture.

  3. Stir in the turmeric and salt.

  4. Cook the mixture in a pan over medium heat until fragrant.

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. Turmeric + cumintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,698 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Coriander + cumintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,866 recipes

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

  3. Turmeric + cardamomtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together667 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Turmeric + fenugreektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together229 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turmeric + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Grated coconut
Adds fat and body, giving the mixture a rich, creamy texture when cooked.
Poppy seeds
Thicken the mixture and add a nutty, toasted flavour.
Almonds
Add body and a nutty richness to the base.
Coriander seed
Contributes warm, citrusy aroma as the ground spice base.
Cumin seed
Provides earthy, warm aroma that defines the spice blend.
Onion
Adds sweetness and savoury depth as it softens during cooking.

The step that matters

Cook the mixture until fragrant. Gentle heat over medium warmth blooms the ground spices and softens raw onion and nuts, so the base tastes cooked rather than raw and dusty. Heating too hard can scorch the ground spices and turn them bitter.

Swap the fenugreek

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turmeric, coriander, cumin, cardamom, ginger, pepper, clove):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Saffronfits better
  4. Fenugreekthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turmeric, coriander, cumin, cardamom, ginger, pepper, clove. 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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