Name: Browned Mutton Curry
Ingredients: 1 pint finely chopped cold mutton; ½ cup rice; 1 tablespoon butter; 1 egg; 1 cup flour; 2 quarts boiling water; 2 tablespoons curry powder; Salt to taste

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Browned Mutton Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice

Wash the rice.
Add the rice to the boiling water and boil until tender.

Cook the mutton

In a separate pan, melt the butter and add the mutton.
Stir in the curry powder and cook for a few minutes.
In a bowl, beat the egg and mix with the flour to make a batter.
Drop spoonfuls of the batter into the mutton mixture and cook until golden brown.

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.

Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,645 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Rice + flourtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,611 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Mutton + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,781 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton: Provides the main meat and savoury flavour of the curry.
Egg: Binds the flour batter so the dumplings hold together while cooking.
Flour: Forms the batter that sets into dumplings and browns in the pan.
Butter: Adds fat for frying the mutton and carries the curry powder's flavour.
Curry powder: Supplies the spice flavour and aroma that define the dish.

“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.