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Curried Meat

A stew of meat, onion, mushrooms, and curry in butter and stock, finished with lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Curried Meat

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan.

  2. Add the pieces of meat, onion, and mushrooms; fry lightly until golden brown.

  3. Stir in the stock gradually and simmer for 10-15 minutes.

  4. Mix the curry powder (or paste) with a little cream or stock, then stir into the stewpan.

  5. Add the lemon juice and skim off any fat before serving.

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. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

  4. Meat + mushroomtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,423 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Meat
Provides the main protein and savoury flavour once browned in the butter.
Onion
Softens and browns, adding sweetness that balances the curry spices.
Curry powder
Supplies the spice blend that gives the dish its characteristic aroma and flavour.
Stock
Provides the liquid that gently cooks the meat and carries the curry flavours.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, spiced sauce.

The step that matters

Frying the meat and onion until golden brown. Browning builds deep savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction. Frying too gently leaves the meat greyish and the sauce flat, while the curry powder needs the stock to be added afterward so it does not scorch in the hot fat.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, meat, onion, mushroom, cream):

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, meat, onion, mushroom, cream. 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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