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Curry of Cold Meat

A curry made with cold meat, apple, onion, curry powder, mulligatawny paste, corn flour, and gravy, served over rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Curry of Cold Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Peel and slice the apple and onion.

  2. Melt the butter in a frying pan and fry the apple and onion until light brown.

  3. Mix the curry powder, mulligatawny paste, corn flour, and salt with a little cold water to form a smooth paste.

  4. Add the paste to the frying pan and stir in the gravy until it boils.

  5. Let the mixture simmer for 10 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain into a clean saucepan, cut the cold meat into small pieces, and add to the curry gravy.

  2. Simmer gently for 30 minutes.

  3. Serve on a dish with well-boiled 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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Onion + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,205 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

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

  5. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

Flour and butter 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

Cold meat
Provides the main body of the dish, and is warmed through in the curry gravy.
Apple
Adds mild sweetness and softens into the sauce as it cooks.
Onion
Browns in the butter, building savoury depth and sweetness for the curry base.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced aroma and flavour that define the dish.
Corn flour
Thickens the gravy into a smooth sauce as it heats.
Butter
Carries the frying of the apple and onion and adds richness.

The step that matters

Stirring the cornflour paste into the gravy. Cornflour must be mixed smoothly with cold water first, then stirred into hot liquid and brought to a boil. Starch added dry or unmixed clumps and stays lumpy, while boiling is needed for the starch to swell and thicken the sauce.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, onion, corn, flour, 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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