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Sauce

Indian Pickle Sauce

A sauce made from fried onion, curry powder, pickle vinegar, melted butter, and diced pickles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,226 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Indian Pickle Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Fry the onion in butter until brown.

  2. Remove the onion from the pan.

  3. Stir in the curry powder and pickle vinegar.

  4. Strain the mixture.

  5. Add the strained mixture to the melted butter.

Finish and serve

  1. Cut the pickles into dice.

  2. Serve the diced pickles in the sauce.

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. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + vinegartop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Onion
Browns in butter to build a sweet, savoury flavour base for the sauce.
Butter
Carries the flavours and gives the sauce its rich, fatty body.
Curry powder
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the sauce.
Pickle vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that brightens the rich butter.
Pickles
Add tangy flavour and a bit of crunch to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Fry the onion until brown. Browning the onion in butter develops deep, sweet flavour through caramelisation. Taking it too far turns it bitter, so watch it closely and remove it once it is evenly browned.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Mustardfits about as well
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Onionthe original
  4. Cucumberfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, vinegar. 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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