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Curry of Cold Meat, Rice Border

A curry made from sliced cold meat simmered in butter, onion, flour, curry powder, and stock, served over boiled salted rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,433 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Curry of Cold Meat, Rice Border

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curry sauce

  1. In a frying pan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the chopped onion and cook until yellow.

  3. Stir in the flour and curry powder.

  4. Gradually add the stock or water, salt, and pepper.

  5. Simmer for 5 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain over the meat.

  2. Simmer for an additional 10 minutes.

  3. Serve with a border of hot boiled salted rice.

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 + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Meat + ricetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,481 recipes

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

Butter and flour 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

Butter
Melts to form a fat base that carries the onion and curry flavour.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a sauce as it cooks.
Curry powder
Provides the spiced aroma and flavour of the sauce.
Onion
Adds sweetness and body to the sauce as it cooks down to yellow.
Cold meat
Is gently warmed through in the sauce, absorbing its flavour.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour and curry powder into the butter. Stirring the flour and curry powder into the melted butter and onion lets the raw starch and spice cook briefly before liquid is added. This helps the sauce thicken smoothly without lumps and reduces the raw, dusty taste of the flour.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, pepper, meat, rice):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper, meat, rice. 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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