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Sauce

Curry Sauce

A sauce made with onions, butter, flour, curry powder, ginger, salt, and water or stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Curry Sauce

Why it works: Onion and ginger are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,595 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Curry Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Fry the chopped onions in butter until soft.

  2. Mix flour, curry powder, ginger, and salt; add to the fried onions.

  3. Continue frying while slowly adding cold water or meat stock.

  4. Stir until the mixture boils and thickens.

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. Onion + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,595 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Flour + gingertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + meattop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Butter and flour 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

Onions
Softened in butter, they build the sweet, savoury base of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the liquid as it heats, giving the sauce body.
Butter
Carries the frying onions and adds richness to the sauce.
Curry powder
Supplies the main spice flavour and aroma of the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the cold liquid slowly. Adding cold water or stock gradually while stirring keeps flour from clumping. Lumps form when liquid is poured in quickly, so the sauce stays smooth as it thickens.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Gingerthe original

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