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Curried Vegetables

A sauce of butter, flour, curry powder, and milk served over peas, potato balls, turnips, and carrots.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Curried Vegetables

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan and stir in the flour to make a roux.

  2. Add the curry powder, salt, pepper, and milk, stirring until smooth.

Add the vegetables

  1. Mix in the onion juice, cooked peas, potato balls, turnips, and carrots.

  2. Cook over medium heat until the vegetables are heated through.

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 + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Flour + turniptop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Potato + turniptop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together562 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the roux and gives the sauce richness and a smooth body.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a smooth, stable sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving it creaminess.
Curry powder
Provides the main spiced aroma and flavour of the dish.
Cooked peas
Add sweetness and soft texture to the vegetable mixture.
Carrots
Add sweetness, colour and firm texture to the vegetables.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the melted butter. Cooking the flour in the butter to form a roux coats the starch granules so they disperse evenly in the milk. Adding milk without a smooth roux can leave lumps and an uneven, floury sauce.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Lentilsfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper, milk, onion, potato, turnip. 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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