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Curry Sauce

A savory sauce made with onions, apples, butter, ham, spices, curry powder, and broth, thickened with flour.

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

Make the sauce base

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

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

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

Finish the sauce

  1. Moisten with broth, milk, or water, and a little glaze.

  2. Boil until thick and adhering to the back of a spoon.

  3. Pass through a fine sieve.

  4. Then boil for a few more minutes.

  5. Store in a cool place and use as needed.

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
Cook down to brown and sweeten, providing the main body and savoury flavour of the sauce.
Butter
Fat that cooks the aromatics and carries the curry spices' flavour.
Flour
Thickens the liquid so the sauce becomes smooth and clings to a spoon.
Curry powder
Supplies the main spice aroma and flavour of the sauce.
Apples
Break down during cooking to add natural sweetness and body.
Broth or milk
Liquid that loosens the thickened base into a pourable sauce.

The step that matters

Boil until thick and adhering to the back of a spoon. Flour thickens only as it is cooked through and the starch swells, so the sauce must boil long enough to coat a spoon. Stopping early leaves it thin and floury tasting.

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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