Skip to main content
Main

An Excellent Curry

A veal curry made with onions, apples, suet, curry powder, flour, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Veal and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,841 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

An Excellent Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the meat into small squares.

Fry and simmer

  1. Add salt and fry the meat, onions, and apples in the block suet until golden brown.

  2. Transfer to a stewpan with stock and simmer until tender.

Thicken

  1. Mix the curry powder and flour to a paste, add to the stewpan, and stir until it thickens.

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. Veal + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,841 recipes

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

  2. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Onion + appletop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,206 recipes

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

  4. Apple + flourtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,140 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Veal + flourtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,886 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal cutlet
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender through slow simmering.
Onions
Add sweetness and savoury depth as they brown in the suet.
Apples
Add gentle sweetness that balances the spiced curry flavour.
Block suet
Provides fat for frying, which carries flavour and browns the ingredients.
Flour
Thickens the stewpan liquid into a sauce as it cooks.

The step that matters

Frying until golden brown. Browning the meat, onions, and apples in the fat builds deeper savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pale frying gives a flatter, less rich curry.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, onion, flour):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, onion, 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.

More veal curry recipes

Soup 15 See all 34 →

You might also like

Veal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesApple SoupApple Soup33 recipesBeef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes