Skip to main content
Main

Indian Curry Sauce

A sauce made with butter, onion, mutton, parsley, flour, curry powder, broth, lime juice, egg yolk, cream, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and lime match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 547 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Indian Curry Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the roux

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan.

  2. Add the chopped onion, sliced mutton, and parsley. Stir over low heat for 5 minutes.

  3. Add the flour and curry powder. Fry for a few minutes to cook the flour.

Simmer and strain

  1. Stir in the broth and lime juice.

  2. Allow to simmer for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

  3. Strain the sauce through a fine strainer or tammy cloth back into the stewpan.

Bind and finish

  1. Bring to a boil and bind with the egg yolk, cream, and butter.

  2. Stir over the heat for a few seconds, but do not let it boil again.

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 + limetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together547 recipes

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

  2. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + limetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,263 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked in butter, giving it body.
Egg yolk
Binds and enriches the sauce, giving it a smooth, velvety texture.
Butter
Carries the curry flavour and adds richness to the sauce.
Curry powder
Provides the main spiced flavour of the sauce.
Broth
Forms the liquid base of the sauce.

The step that matters

Do not let the sauce boil after adding the egg yolk. Boiling after the yolk is added can curdle the egg proteins, making the sauce grainy and thin. Heat it gently only until it thickens.

Swap the lime

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, onion, mutton, parsley, flour, veal, egg):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Limethe original
  4. Avocadofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, mutton, parsley, flour, veal, egg. 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.

You might also like

Beef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesHaricot MuttonHaricot Mutton59 recipesMutton SoupMutton Soup56 recipes