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A Common Indian Currie

A curry made with meat, onions, garlic, eschalots, curry powder, salt, flour, butter, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

A Common Indian Currie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix curry powder, salt, and flour in a bowl.

  2. Cut the meat into thick cutlets or squares and rub half of the spice mixture over it.

Fry and stew

  1. Fry the sliced onions and garlic or eschalots in butter until golden brown, then drain them.

  2. Fry the meat lightly in the same pan, then drain the fat and place the meat in a clean saucepan.

  3. Strew the fried onions over the meat and add enough boiling water to almost cover it.

  4. Mix the remaining curry powder with a little broth or cold water, then pour it into the saucepan after the curry has stewed for a few minutes.

  5. Simmer gently until the meat is tender, about 1.25 to 2.5 hours depending on the type of meat.

  6. Optionally, add an acid apple or vegetables during cooking.

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. Clove + appletop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Meat
Provides the main body of the dish and becomes tender through long, gentle simmering.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced flavour that defines the dish, with half added first and half later.
Onions
Frying them until golden adds sweetness and depth to the sauce.
Flour
Lightly thickens the sauce as the curry stews.
Butter
Carries the frying of the onions and meat, adding richness and browning.

The step that matters

Adding the remaining curry powder. Adding the second half of the spice after a few minutes of stewing lets it bloom in the liquid without scorching in the hot fat, keeping the sauce balanced and the flavour fresh.

Swap the clove

The recipe marks clove as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, flour, onion, garlic, butter, apple):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, flour, onion, garlic, butter, apple. 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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