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Sauce

Curry Sauce

A savory sauce made with onions, apples, ham, spices, curry powder, and broth, simmered until thick.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Curry Sauce

Why it works: Onion and thyme are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,171 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Curry Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a pan, combine sliced onions, peeled apples, butter, chopped ham, mace, peppercorns, bay leaves, and thyme.

  2. Cook over moderate heat until the onions are brown and tender.

  3. Add curry powder, vinegar, flour, salt, and sugar; stir well.

  4. Moisten with broth (or milk or water) and a little glaze, then boil until thick.

  5. Pass the mixture through a fine sieve.

  6. Boil again for a few minutes, then transfer to a basin for later 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.

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. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Thyme + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mace + thymetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,113 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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 when browned and softened, forming the sweet, savoury base of the sauce.
Butter
Carries the aromatics and browns the onions, adding richness and flavour.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce as it cooks.
Curry powder
Supplies the main spiced aroma and flavour of the sauce.
Apples
Soften into the base, adding a mild sweetness that balances the curry spices.

The step that matters

Boil until thick. Flour thickens only when the liquid boils long enough for its starch to swell. Too little boiling leaves a thin sauce, while too much reduces it further and can make it pasty.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, apple, butter, ham, thyme, vinegar, flour):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, apple, butter, ham, thyme, vinegar, 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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