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A Dry Currie

A dry currie made with fowl or veal, onions, butter, curry powder, cayenne pepper, salt, milk, water, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

A Dry Currie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Melt the butter in a pan.

  2. Fry the minced onions until golden, then drain the onions.

  3. Fry the fowl or veal until browned.

Season and stew

  1. Dust the browned meat with curry powder and cayenne pepper.

  2. Transfer the meat and onions to a stew pan.

  3. Add salt, milk, and water to the stew pan.

  4. Cover the pan and let it stew until the meat is tender.

  5. Ten minutes before serving, stir in the lemon juice.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Fowl or veal
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender through slow stewing in liquid.
Butter
Fat for frying that carries flavour and helps the meat and onions brown.
Onions
Soften and turn golden when fried, adding sweetness and body to the sauce.
Curry powder
Supplies the main spice aroma and flavour of the dish.
Milk
Adds richness and mellows the spices during the stew.

The step that matters

Browning the meat before stewing. Searing the fowl or veal until browned builds deep, savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction. Skipping or rushing this step leaves the dish flat, and the meat must be properly dry and not crowded to brown well.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, pepper, milk, 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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