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Curry, Dry

A curry made with butter, onion, dry curry powder, cream, and chosen meat, served over boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Curry, Dry

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curry

  1. In a skillet, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the diced onion and sauté until soft.

  3. Add your choice of poultry, game, meat, or fish and cook until tender.

  4. Stir in the dry curry powder and mix well.

Finish and serve

  1. Transfer the meat to a serving dish.

  2. Pour the cream into the skillet to combine with the curry mixture, then pour over the meat.

  3. Serve with boiled rice sautéed in a little butter and sprinkled with dry curry powder.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Meat + ricetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,481 recipes

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

  4. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + ricetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and carries the flavor of the onion and curry powder.
Onion
Softens into a sweet base that gives the sauce body and depth.
Dry curry powder
Supplies the main spice aroma, and toasting it in fat brings out its flavor.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, mellow texture to the curry sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in the dry curry powder and mix well. Spices bloom in fat and release more aroma when briefly cooked, but they can scorch and turn bitter over high heat. Mix them in evenly so no clumps burn and the flavor stays balanced.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, meat, cream, rice):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, meat, cream, 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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