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Curried Orayt

A curry sauce made from onions, garlic, eschalots, butter, gravy, cocoa‑nut, apples, curry powder, flour, salt, and cream.

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 Orayt

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Slice the onions, garlic, and eschalots.

  2. Fry them gently in food butter until they are a fine yellow-brown.

  3. Drain the fried mixture on a sieve.

Make the sauce

  1. In a clean saucepan, combine the drained mixture with good gravy and rasped cocoa-nut or other condiments.

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

  3. Strain the mixture and return it to the heat.

  4. Add curry powder, flour, and salt, mixing to a smooth batter with 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. Cocoa + appletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together52 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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
Break down into soft pulp that gives the sauce its body and sweetness.
Food butter
Fat that frying the onions in gently browns them and adds rich flavour.
Gravy
Liquid base that the onions simmer in, carrying savour through the sauce.
Curry powder
Supplies the spice and aroma that define the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so the cream mixes into a smooth, coating consistency.
Cream
Adds richness and smoothness, softening the sharpness of the spices.

The step that matters

Add the flour and cream smoothly. Flour added to hot liquid can clump; mixing it first into a smooth batter with cream lets it disperse evenly so the sauce thickens without lumps.

Swap the garlic

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Turmericfits about as well
  4. Garlicthe original

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