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Sauce

Curry Sauce

A sauce made with butter, curry powder, nutmeg, saffron, flour, and water or broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Curry Sauce

Why it works: Turmeric and saffron match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 238 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Curry Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the curry powder, grated nutmeg, saffron, and flour; stir to combine.

  3. Pour in enough boiling water or broth to cover the mixture.

  4. Let it stew for 15 minutes.

  5. Strain the sauce, stir in a little more butter, 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. Turmeric + saffrontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together238 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Turmeric + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together372 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Nutmeg + saffrontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together125 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Turmeric + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,637 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and adds a rich, smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the liquid, giving it body.
Curry powder
Provides the main spiced flavour and colour of the sauce.
Saffron
Adds aroma and a golden colour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stewing the flour mixture. Flour must be cooked in the fat and liquid long enough to lose its raw taste and to thicken fully; stewing for the full time lets the starch swell and the spices bloom.

Swap the saffron

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Saffronthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, turmeric, nutmeg, flour. 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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