Name: Curry of Cold Roast Beef
Ingredients: 3½ ounces of butter; ½ cup of gravy from the meat or gravy made from bones/trimmings; 1 tablespoon curry powder

Why it works: Butter and meat are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,594 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Curry of Cold Roast Beef

Ingredients

3½ ounces of butter
½ cup of gravy from the meat or gravy made from bones/trimmings
1 tablespoon curry powder

Directions

Make the sauce

Melt the butter in a stewpan.
Pour in the gravy until you have the desired amount.
Add the curry powder and let it simmer for 10 to 12 minutes.

Finish

Taste the curry and adjust the seasoning if necessary.

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.

Butter + meattop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,594 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter: Carries the curry powder's flavour and adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the sauce.
Gravy: Forms the liquid base of the sauce and supplies meaty savoury flavour and body.
Curry powder: Provides the sauce's characteristic spice aroma and flavour.

The step that matters

Add the curry powder and let it simmer for 10 to 12 minutes.. Simmering cooks out the raw, dusty taste of ground spices and helps their aromatic compounds dissolve into the warm butter and liquid, so the sauce tastes rounded rather than harsh or raw.

“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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Curry of Cold Roast Beef