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Curried Gravy

A curry-flavored gravy made with onions, garlic, eschalots, butter, gravy, cocoa-nut, curry powder, flour, cream, and acid.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Curried Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the onions, garlic, and eschalots (if using).

Fry and drain

  1. Fry them gently in butter until they are a light brown.

  2. Drain the fried mixture on a sieve.

Make the gravy

  1. In a clean saucepan, combine the drained mixture with the gravy and cocoa-nut.

  2. Simmer for 30 to 45 minutes until the onions are tender enough to strain.

  3. Strain the gravy and bring it back to a boil.

  4. Mix in the curry powder, flour, and salt to taste, combined with the cream.

  5. Simmer for 15 to 20 minutes until ready to use.

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 + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Garlic + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

Onions
Soften and sweeten as they fry and simmer, building the body of the gravy.
Butter
Fat for frying the onions, adding richness and browning them gently.
Gravy
Liquid base that carries the flavours and forms the body of the dish.
Curry powder
Supplies the spice blend that gives the gravy its characteristic aroma and flavour.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as it simmers, giving it a smoother, fuller texture.
Cream
Adds richness and softens the sharpness of the spices for a rounder finish.

The step that matters

Fry the onions gently to a light brown. Frying slowly caramelises the onion sugars for depth of flavour. Too much heat scorches them, leaving bitter notes that carry into the whole gravy.

Swap the clove

The recipe marks clove as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, garlic, butter, cocoa, flour, cream, vinegar):

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, garlic, butter, cocoa, flour, cream, 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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