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Curried Meat

A stew of meat, onion, mushrooms, and curry powder simmered in stock and finished with lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Curried Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Melt the butter in a clean stewpan.

  2. Add the pieces of meat, sliced onion, and chopped mushrooms.

  3. Fry lightly until golden brown.

Make the curry

  1. Gradually stir in the stock, allowing it to simmer for 10-15 minutes.

  2. In a bowl, mix the curry powder with a little milk or cream until smooth.

  3. Stir the mixture into the stew.

  4. Add the lemon juice.

  5. Skim off any fat 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Mushroom + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,231 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. Meat + mushroomtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,423 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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, which browns and firms as it cooks.
Butter
Carries the curry flavour and gives the frying a rich, browned surface.
Curry powder
Supplies the spice flavour that defines the dish.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that simmers the meat and onion into a sauce.
Onion
Adds sweetness and body as it softens and browns in the fat.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, spiced sauce.

The step that matters

Mixing the curry powder with milk or cream. Curry powder added dry can clump and stay gritty. Mixing it first into a smooth paste with liquid lets the spices disperse evenly through the sauce.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Grapefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, meat, onion, mushroom, milk. 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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