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Kulleah Chowlahee

A spiced green vegetable dish cooked with onions, garlic, coriander, and spices, topped with halved hard-boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and turmeric match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,776 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Kulleah Chowlahee

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the greens

  1. Pick and clean the chowlahee greens, removing any dirt or grass, and cut them into small pieces.

  2. Place the greens in a saucepan with water and boil for 15 minutes.

  3. Drain the greens and set aside.

Cook the greens

  1. In the same saucepan, heat ghee and fry the sliced onions until golden brown.

  2. Add the greens to the onions along with salt, and fry for a few minutes.

  3. Fry the sliced garlic in ghee until brown, then add it to the greens.

  4. Grind the coriander and add it to the mixture, stirring well.

  5. Add turmeric, cinnamon, cloves, cardamom, and capsicum, and mix thoroughly.

  6. Simmer the mixture for a short time.

Serve

  1. Serve the greens topped with halved hard-boiled eggs.

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. Ginger + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Coriander + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

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

  5. Coriander + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,253 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

Chowlahee greens
Form the bulk of the dish, becoming tender after boiling and frying.
Ghee
Adds richness and carries the spices, helping onions and garlic brown.
Onions
Caramelise to golden brown, adding sweetness and depth to the base.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add protein and a mild, creamy texture as a topping.
Garlic
Browns in ghee to add pungency and savoury aroma.
Turmeric
Gives the dish its yellow colour and an earthy, warm flavour.

The step that matters

Frying the onions until golden brown. Onions must be cooked slowly in hot ghee until deeply coloured; pale or burnt onions leave the base either bland or bitter, and this sweet base shapes the whole dish.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ghee, coriander, ginger, garlic, clove, egg, turmeric):

  1. Welsh onionfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ghee, coriander, ginger, garlic, clove, egg, turmeric. 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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