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Mr. ARNOTT’s Currie

A curry of finely chopped cabbage and sliced apples simmered with onions, garlic, butter, flour, gravy, and roasted fowl.

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 ↓

Mr. ARNOTT’s Currie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the outer leaves from the cabbage until it is the size of an egg, then chop it finely.

  2. Mix the chopped cabbage with sliced apples, lemon juice, black pepper, and curry powder.

Make the sauce

  1. In a pot, heat the fried onions and minced garlic with butter until bubbling.

  2. Stir in the flour and gravy.

Combine and cook

  1. Add the cabbage mixture.

  2. Simmer together.

  3. If needed, add cayenne pepper for heat.

  4. Add the roasted fowl or your choice of meat.

  5. Cook until heated through.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  3. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  4. Cabbage + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,001 recipes

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

  5. Cabbage + garlictop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together635 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the dish and gives a tender, slightly sweet vegetable body.
Apples
Add sweetness and a fruity acidity that balances the curry spice.
Onions
Fried brown, they build deep, savoury sweetness and body for the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the curry flavour through the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so the sauce clings to the cabbage and meat.
Curry powder
Supplies the main spice aroma and warm, earthy flavour.

The step that matters

Stirring in the flour and gravy. Flour added to hot fat must be cooked and stirred smoothly into the liquid, or it forms lumps and leaves a raw, starchy taste. Simmering gently keeps the sauce smooth and lets the thickening set evenly.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, lemon, pepper, onion, garlic, butter, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, lemon, pepper, onion, garlic, butter, flour. 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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