Name: Curried Veal
Ingredients: 1 breast of veal, cut into pieces; 1 chopped onion; 2 tablespoons curry powder; 2 cups veal and beef gravy; Salt, to taste; Pepper, to taste; Juice of 1 lemon

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Curried Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Lightly fry the veal pieces with the chopped onion.
Rub the veal with curry powder.
Add the veal to the gravy and season with salt, pepper, and lemon juice.

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.

Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,092 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,971 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Veal + beeftop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,784 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal breast: Provides the main meat, which becomes tender as it simmers in the gravy.
Curry powder: Supplies the spice flavour that defines the dish, and rubbing it on the meat helps it cling.
Veal and beef gravy: Forms the liquid base that carries flavour and keeps the meat moist.
Onion: Softens and sweetens during frying, adding savoury depth to the sauce.