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Curry Karl

A curry made with veal, rabbit, or mutton, onions, garlic, and apple, flavored with curry powder, chutney, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic 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 ↓

Curry Karl

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the meat into pieces, not slices.

  2. Slice the onions, garlic, and apple.

Cook

  1. Fry the onions, garlic, and apple in the salad oil until browned.

  2. Add the meat, gravy, curry powder, chutney, hot spices, salt, pepper, and lemon juice.

  3. Steam gently until the meat is tender.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

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

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Clove + appletop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Garlic + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Soften and brown in the oil, building sweetness and savoury depth for the sauce.
Veal, rabbit, or mutton
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through gentle steaming in the sauce.
Gravy
Supplies the liquid that forms the sauce and carries the curry flavours.
Curry powder
Gives the dish its main spice aroma and warm flavour.
Sour apple
Adds acidity and body that balances the richness of the meat and gravy.

The step that matters

Steam gently until the meat is tender. Low, gentle heat lets tough connective tissue break down slowly; high heat toughens muscle fibres and can dry the meat, so the sauce should only simmer.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, clove, garlic, veal, pepper, lemon):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, clove, garlic, veal, pepper, 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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