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Curried Mixed Vegetables

A curry of peas, beans, cauliflower, carrots, turnips, tomatoes, onions, butter, curry powder, and optional cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cauliflower and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 286 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Curried Mixed Vegetables

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil and chop the vegetables (except peas) into neat pieces.

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

  3. Add the sliced onion and fry until slightly brown.

Cook the curry

  1. Mix in the curry powder and salt, stirring well.

  2. Add the chopped vegetables and stir continuously until well coated with curry.

  3. Cook for about 8 minutes, until the onion is tender.

  4. Stir in the cream just before serving, if desired.

  5. Serve immediately.

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. Cauliflower + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together286 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Beans + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,713 recipes

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

  4. Beans + cauliflowertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together290 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Beans + turniptop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together400 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Onion
Softens and browns in the butter, building sweetness and a base flavour for the curry.
Butter
Carries the curry powder and adds richness, helping the spices spread through the vegetables.
Curry powder
Provides the main spice aroma, which blooms in fat and coats the vegetables.
Carrots
Add sweetness and a firm texture that holds up through cooking.
Cauliflower
Contributes bulk and a tender texture that absorbs the spiced butter.

The step that matters

Coat the vegetables well in the curry powder. Stirring continuously while the vegetables are added to the spiced fat keeps the powder from scorching on the pan and spreads the aroma evenly, so no pieces are left bland or burnt.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, beans, cauliflower, carrot, turnip, tomato, butter):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, beans, cauliflower, carrot, turnip, tomato, butter. 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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