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A Bengau Currie

A curry made with onions, garlic, ginger, cayenne pepper, gravy, and mutton.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

A Bengau Currie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Slice and fry 3 large onions in 2 ounces of butter until done, then remove from the pan.

  2. In a stewpan, combine the pounded onions and garlic with 1 teaspoon of powdered ginger and 1 teaspoon of cayenne pepper.

  3. Add the mixture to the butter in the pan along with 1 cup of good gravy and let it stew for about 10 minutes.

Make the curry

  1. Stir in the fried onions and the gravy mixture.

  2. Add 1.5 pounds of mutton or other meat, and simmer gently for an hour or more until 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. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Garlic + gingertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,402 recipes

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

  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
Fried and pounded onions build the thick body and savoury sweetness of the sauce.
Butter
Fat carries the spices and gives the onions a rich, browned flavour.
Mutton
Slow simmering breaks down connective tissue, leaving the meat tender and moist.
Gravy
Liquid that lets the spices and onions stew into a cohesive sauce.

The step that matters

Simmering the meat. Mutton needs a long, gentle simmer so connective tissue softens; rushing it or boiling hard leaves the meat tough and can dry the sauce.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, butter, garlic, ginger, pepper, mutton):

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Cuminfits better
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, garlic, ginger, pepper, mutton. 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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