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Curries and Pilaffs

A curry with meat simmered in butter, tamarind, ginger, raisins, lemon, and coconut or almond milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Tamarind and ginger work together. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 325 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Curries and Pilaffs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Cut the meat into small pieces.

Make the curry

  1. Fry the meat lightly in butter with the minced shallot for 2-3 minutes.

  2. Add the meat to the curry sauce and let it steep for at least 1 hour.

  3. Gently heat the mixture without boiling for 25-30 minutes in a partially uncovered pan.

  4. Add seasonings like tamarind pulp, grated ginger, raisins, or lemon juice.

  5. Stir in coconut or almond milk or cream just before serving.

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. Tamarind + gingertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together325 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Tamarind + coconuttop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together151 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  3. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

  4. Ginger + coconuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,168 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 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

Meat
Provides the main protein; slow gentle heating keeps it tender rather than tough.
Coconut or almond milk
Adds richness and body to the sauce, softening its sharpness.
Butter
Carries flavour and adds fat for frying the meat and shallot.
Tamarind pulp
Adds sourness that balances the sweetness and richness of the curry.

The step that matters

Gently heat without boiling. Boiling toughens meat proteins and can cause dairy or nut milk to separate, so keep the mixture at a gentle simmer or below.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, butter, shallot, tamarind, ginger, lemon, coconut):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Mangofits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, butter, shallot, tamarind, ginger, lemon, coconut. 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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