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Curry Sauce

A sauce made from onions, parsley roots, celery, thyme, bay leaf, mace, flour, curry powder, and white stock, simmered for 45 minutes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Curry Sauce

Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Curry Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a pan, melt butter and slightly brown the minced onions, parsley roots, minced celery, thyme, bay leaf, and mace.

  2. Sprinkle the mixture with flour and curry powder, cooking for a few minutes without letting it color.

Simmer and strain

  1. Gradually dilute the mixture with white stock, stirring well.

  2. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer gently for 45 minutes.

  3. Rub the sauce through a fine sieve to remove solids.

Finish and serve

  1. Heat the sauce again, skim off any grease, and keep warm in a bain-marie.

  2. Serve with fish, shellfish, poultry, or various egg dishes.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Celery + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,193 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the stock, giving it body.
Curry powder
Adds the spiced aroma and flavor that define the sauce.
White stock
Forms the liquid base that the roux-thickened vegetables are diluted into.
Minced onions
Provide savory sweetness and body once browned and simmered into the sauce.
Butter
Carries the flavor of the vegetables and helps them brown in the pan.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour and curry powder without coloring. Cooking the flour briefly removes its raw taste and lets it thicken well, while browning would darken the sauce and make the curry powder taste bitter.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, parsley, celery, thyme, flour, butter):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, parsley, celery, thyme, flour, butter. 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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