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The Begum's Curry

A curry made with diced meat, curry powder, vinegar, Harvey sauce, coconut juice, ground rice, butter, gravy, and onions.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Coconut and rice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,063 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

The Begum's Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the curry

  1. In a frying pan, melt butter and fry the meat until browned.

  2. In a bowl, mix together curry powder, vinegar, Harvey sauce, salt, coconut juice, ground rice, and butter.

  3. Add the mixture to the browned meat along with the gravy and stir well.

  4. Let it cook for a short while, then transfer the curry to a brown earthenware jar.

Finish and simmer

  1. In the same pan, fry the sliced onions in butter and add them to the curry.

  2. Allow the jar to simmer on the hob until ready to serve.

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. Coconut + ricetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,063 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Rice + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

  3. Coconut + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Coconut + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,831 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ground rice
Thickens the curry and gives it a smoother, fuller body as it cooks.
Coconut juice
Adds moisture and a mild sweetness that balances the spices.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the spiced flavours of the curry.
Butter
Carries fat for frying and adds richness to the meat and onions.

Swap the coconut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, vinegar, sauce, rice, butter, onion):

  1. Avocadofits about as well
  2. Coconutthe original
  3. Grapefits less well
  4. Mangofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, vinegar, sauce, rice, butter, onion. 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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