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Curry Sauce

A savory sauce made with butter, flour, curry powder, onion, stock, salt, and pepper.

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 pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Curry Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

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

  2. Add the chopped onion and fry until brown.

  3. Stir in the flour and curry powder, cooking for one minute.

Finish the sauce

  1. Pour in the stock and season with salt and pepper.

  2. Simmer for five minutes, then strain and serve.

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 + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Flour + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Butter
Carries the spices and adds richness and a rounded flavour to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter and stock.
Curry powder
Provides the main aroma and flavour, released better when briefly cooked in fat.
Onion
Browning adds sweetness and depth to the base of the sauce.
Stock
Forms the liquid that the flour thickens into a sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour and curry powder, cooking for one minute. Flour must be stirred evenly into the hot butter so it does not clump, and cooking it briefly removes its raw taste. Stock added afterward then blends smoothly and thickens evenly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper. 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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