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Curry and Rice

A veal curry served with rice, peas, potatoes, bananas, and chutney.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Curry and Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the rice

  1. In a double boiler, combine rice, salt, and water. Cook until rice is tender and water is steamed away.

Make the curry

  1. Chop the onion and brown it in butter.

  2. Add 2 cups of water to the onion and bring to a boil for a few minutes.

  3. Mix flour with a little water to create a slurry, then add to the boiling mixture to thicken to gravy consistency.

  4. Season with salt and curry powder to taste.

  5. Cut the cooked veal steak into cubes and add to the curry along with peas and diced potatoes.

  6. Simmer until the rice is done.

Serve

  1. Serve the curry and rice in separate dishes, accompanied by cold bananas and chutney.

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 + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Rice + potatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together851 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Peas + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,016 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Rice + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

  5. Rice + peastop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,434 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Cooks into tender grains that form the base of the meal.
Butter
Browns the onion, adding fat and a rich, toasty flavor.
Onion
Softens and browns in butter, building the savory base of the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the boiling liquid into a gravy.
Veal steak
Provides the cooked meat that is cubed into the curry.
Potatoes
Add body and starch to the curry, making it more filling.

The step that matters

Thickening the gravy with flour slurry. Flour must be mixed with water first so it does not clump, then added to boiling liquid and kept simmering so the starch swells and thickens the gravy evenly.

Swap the banana

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Bananathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, butter, onion, flour, veal, peas, potato. 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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