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How to Make Curry

A sauce made with onions, butter, curry powder, stock, and spices, simmered with meat or vegetables and served over rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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How to Make Curry

Why it works: Sauce and anchovy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,057 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

How to Make Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curry base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Fry the sliced onion until light brown.

  3. Add the curry powder and fry with the onions for about 30 seconds, stirring constantly.

  4. In a separate bowl, mix the flour with a small piece of butter until smooth.

  5. Combine the flour mixture with the gravy or stock.

  6. Add the gravy mixture to the onion and curry powder, stirring continuously.

Season and simmer

  1. Incorporate the clove, Worcestershire sauce, lemon peel, lemon juice, chutney, anchovy sauce, ground mace, and salt.

  2. Let the sauce simmer for about 2 hours.

  3. Stir in the milk or cream, being careful not to let it boil to avoid curdling.

Add the meat and serve

  1. Add the cooked meat, chicken, or vegetables to the sauce and heat thoroughly for about 5 minutes without boiling.

  2. Serve the curry with boiled rice on the side.

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. Sauce + anchovytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

Onion
Softens and browns, adding sweetness and depth to the sauce base.
Flour
Thickens the sauce, giving it body and a smooth texture.
Curry powder
Blooms in hot butter to release aroma and give the sauce its flavour.
Butter
Carries the aromatics and adds richness and fat to the sauce.
Milk or cream
Adds richness and a mellow, smooth texture to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in the milk or cream without boiling. Dairy proteins can curdle and separate when boiled, so the sauce should stay below a boil once milk or cream is added.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, butter, flour, clove, sauce, lemon, anchovy):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, flour, clove, sauce, lemon, anchovy. 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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