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Curried Vegetables

A curry of boiled seasonal vegetables simmered in a butter, flour, and curry powder sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and cauliflower match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 290 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Curried Vegetables

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the potatoes and cut the cauliflower.

  2. Boil them in salted water with a pinch of sugar for 10 minutes, then strain.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Stir in the flour and curry powder until combined.

  3. Pour in the milk and stir until it boils.

Finish

  1. Add the boiled vegetables and simmer until heated through.

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. Beans + cauliflowertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together290 recipes

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

  2. Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + beanstop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,443 recipes

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

  4. Peas + cauliflowertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together313 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Potato + beanstop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together655 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Carries fat and fat-soluble flavour, and helps the flour cook into the sauce base.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot milk.
Curry powder
Provides the spiced aroma and flavour of the dish, released as it cooks in the butter.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding creaminess as it thickens.
Seasonal vegetables
Make up the body of the dish, softening as they boil and then simmer in the sauce.

The step that matters

Pour in the milk and stir until it boils. Flour starch needs to be evenly dispersed and heated to thicken the sauce. Stirring while the milk heats keeps the starch from clumping into lumps and lets the sauce thicken smoothly.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, carrot, beans, cauliflower, butter, flour, milk):

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, carrot, beans, cauliflower, butter, flour, milk. 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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