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India Curry

A curry made with butter, onion, garlic, curry powder, milk, lemon juice, and beef or mutton simmered slowly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Garlic and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

India Curry

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan over medium heat.

  2. Add the finely sliced onion and cook until golden brown.

  3. Gradually stir in the curry powder.

  4. Slowly add the milk and lemon juice, stirring well until it forms a thick gravy.

  5. If the mixture is too thick, add a little water.

  6. Simmer fresh beef for 2.5 to 3 hours, or mutton and veal for 2 to 2.5 hours.

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. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Garlic + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,893 recipes

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

  4. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 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

Onion
Cooks down to a golden base that gives the gravy body and sweetness.
Curry powder
Supplies the spice flavour and aroma that define the dish.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mellows the spices into a smooth gravy.
Butter
Carries the spices and adds richness to the gravy.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, spiced gravy.

The step that matters

Slowly add the milk and lemon juice. Adding dairy and acid together quickly can cause the milk to curdle or separate. Adding it slowly while stirring keeps the gravy smooth and helps it thicken evenly.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (garlic, milk, onion, butter, lemon):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against garlic, milk, onion, butter, lemon. 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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