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Sauce

Sauce Currie

A curry sauce made with onion, celery, parsley root, thyme, bay leaf, mace, flour, curry powder, and white stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Sauce Currie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the sauce base

  1. Sauté the onion, celery, and parsley root in butter until lightly colored.

  2. Add thyme, bay leaf, and mace.

  3. Sprinkle with flour and curry powder; cook briefly without browning.

Simmer and finish

  1. Pour in the white stock and bring to a boil.

  2. Simmer gently for 45 minutes, then strain through a fine sieve.

  3. Reheat the sauce, degrease, and keep warm.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Celery + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,193 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Onion
Sweetens and builds the aromatic base of the sauce as it softens and colors.
Flour
Thickens the sauce by absorbing liquid once the stock is added.
Curry powder
Adds the characteristic spiced aroma and flavor of the sauce.
White stock
Forms the liquid body of the sauce, carrying the flavors of the vegetables and spices.

The step that matters

Cook the flour and curry powder briefly without browning. Flour thickens best when its starch is hydrated in the liquid; cooking it briefly removes raw floury taste. Browning would darken the color and change the flavor, and curry powder can turn bitter if scorched.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, celery, parsley, thyme, flour):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, celery, parsley, thyme, flour. 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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