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Curry

A curry made with cold meat, onions, curry powder, flour, stock, butter, coconut, and served with boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Curry

Why it works: Coconut and rice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,063 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a pan.

  2. Lightly fry the onions.

  3. Add the curry powder and flour.

  4. Gradually stir in the stock until it thickens.

  5. Season with salt and pepper.

  6. Add the coconut.

  7. Let it simmer gently for 30 minutes.

Add the meat and serve

  1. Cut the cold meat into dice.

  2. Add it to the pan and heat thoroughly without boiling.

  3. Serve the curry in the center of a hot dish with a border of boiled rice.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Coconut + ricetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,063 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Pepper + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

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

  5. Butter + coconuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold meat
Forms the main body of the dish and is heated through in the sauce.
Curry powder
Provides the characteristic spiced aroma and flavor of the curry.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce when cooked with the butter.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, carrying the flavors and thickening with the flour.
Butter
Adds fat for frying the onions and carries the curry powder's flavor.
Rice
Serves as the boiled border that accompanies the curry.

The step that matters

Add the meat without boiling. Once the meat is added, the sauce should only be heated through. Boiling toughens cooked meat proteins and can make the sauce separate or taste harsh, so keep it below a simmer.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, flour, butter, coconut, pepper, rice):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, flour, butter, coconut, pepper, rice. 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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