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Sauce

Curry Sauce

A sauce made with onion, carrot, butter, curry powder, apple, tomato puree, Espagnole sauce, and gherkin.

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

Why it works: Carrot and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,606 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Curry Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

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

  2. Add the onion and carrot, and fry until the onion is light brown.

  3. Stir in the curry powder and cook for a few seconds.

  4. Add the chopped apple, tomato puree, and Espagnole sauce.

  5. Boil for a few minutes, then season to taste.

  6. Stir in the chopped gherkin.

  7. Strain the sauce and bottle it.

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. Carrot + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,606 recipes

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

  2. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  3. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + appletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together680 recipes

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

  5. Apple + tomatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together548 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Onion and carrot
Soften and sweeten as they fry, building a flavour base for the sauce.
Curry powder
Provides the main spice aroma, bloomed briefly in hot butter to release its fragrance.
Sour apple
Adds tartness and body that balances the richness of the sauce.
Tomato puree
Adds concentrated tomato flavour, colour and acidity to the sauce.
Espagnole sauce
Forms the savoury, thickened base that gives the sauce its body.

The step that matters

Fry the onion and carrot until light brown. Browning the onion and carrot develops sweet, savoury flavour through caramelisation. Frying too briefly leaves a raw, flat taste, while over-browning can make the sauce bitter.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, carrot, butter, tomato, sauce):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Mangofits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, carrot, butter, tomato, sauce. 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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