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Sauce

Curry Sauce

A sauce made with butter, onion, flour, milk, curry powder, salt, white stock, currant jelly, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Curry Sauce

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Curry Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Cook the onion in the butter without browning.

  2. Add the flour, curry powder, and salt mixed together; cook for 3-4 minutes.

  3. Add the milk, white stock, currant jelly, and lemon juice; strain and reheat.

Optional nut or coconut milk

  1. For coconut or almond milk, soak ½ cup of blanched almonds or coconut in 1½ cups of hot milk for at least an hour, then strain.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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 onion and fat-soluble curry flavour, and enriches the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter and milk.
Curry powder
Provides the main spiced flavour of the sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into a smooth sauce.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness that balances the spices and acidity.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, spiced sauce.

The step that matters

Cook the flour and curry powder before adding liquid. Cooking the flour in fat for a few minutes cooks off raw starch taste and helps the sauce thicken smoothly without lumps. Stirring as liquid is added keeps the starch dispersed.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, flour, milk, lemon. 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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