Skip to main content
Main

Curry Sauce

A sauce made with onion, apple, curry powder, flour, butter, and gravy, finished with lemon juice and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Curry Sauce

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 Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and chop the apple and onion.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter or dripping in a saucepan.

  2. Add the apple and onion, and fry for a few minutes.

  3. Sprinkle in the curry powder and flour.

  4. Pour in the gravy and stir until it boils.

  5. Simmer for half an hour, then strain.

  6. Flavor with lemon juice and salt, boil again, and it's ready.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

Flour
Thickens the gravy as it cooks, giving the sauce body.
Butter or dripping
Fat that carries the curry powder and softens the onion and apple.
Curry powder
Provides the spiced aroma and flavor that define the sauce.
Gravy
Forms the liquid base of the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the sauce.

The step that matters

Sprinkle in the curry powder and flour. Curry powder needs to be cooked briefly in hot fat to bloom its aroma, and flour must be stirred into the fat before liquid is added so it cooks out and thickens smoothly without lumps.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, flour, lemon, butter):

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, flour, lemon, 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.

More curry sauce recipes

Macaroni in 5Indian 4 See all 75 →

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesApple SoupApple Soup33 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes