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A Common Inbiak Currie

A curry made with veal, mutton, or beef, curry powder, onions, and optional apples or vegetables, simmered until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

A Common Inbiak Currie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix curry powder, salt, and flour in a bowl.

  2. Cut the meat into thick cutlets or dice and rub half of the spice mixture over it.

  3. Fry the sliced onions in butter until golden brown, then drain them on a sieve.

  4. In the same pan, lightly fry the meat and drain excess fat.

Make the curry

  1. Place the meat in a clean saucepan, sprinkle the fried onions on top, and add enough boiling water to almost cover it.

  2. Mix the remaining curry powder with a little broth or cold water, then pour it into the saucepan after the curry has stewed for a few minutes.

  3. Simmer gently until the meat is tender, about 1.25 to 2.5 hours depending on the type of meat.

  4. Add optional ingredients like apples or vegetables as needed, allowing time for each to cook.

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 + peastop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,460 recipes

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

  3. Apple + peastop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together192 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Butter + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Meat
Provides the main body of the dish; simmering slowly turns its connective tissue tender.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced aroma and colour that define the dish.
Onions
Browned in butter first, they add sweetness and depth to the sauce.
Flour
Lightly coats the spiced meat and helps thicken the sauce as it cooks.
Butter
Fat for frying the onions and meat, adding richness and browning.

The step that matters

Frying the onions until golden brown. Browning onions in butter develops sweet, savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction; pale or burnt onions leave the sauce bland or bitter.

Swap the apple

The recipe marks apple as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, flour, onion, butter, peas):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, flour, onion, butter, peas. 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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