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Sauce

Curry Sauce for Any Kind of Cold Meat

A sauce made with butter, onion, peppercorns, mace, bay leaves, flour, curry powder, vinegar, salt, boiling water, and beef extract, served over cold meat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Curry Sauce for Any Kind of Cold Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a chafing dish over medium heat.

  2. Add the minced onion, peppercorns, mace, and bay leaves; stir until the onion is browned.

  3. Stir in the flour, curry powder, vinegar, and salt.

  4. Dissolve the beef extract in boiling water and add to the mixture.

  5. Let it simmer for 5-10 minutes, stirring constantly.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the sauce and stir in thinly sliced or diced cold meat.

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 + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  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. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + beeftop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps carry the curry flavour through the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the liquid.
Curry powder
Provides the main spiced, aromatic flavour of the sauce.
Onion
Browns to add sweetness and savoury depth to the base.
Beef extract or stock
Adds savoury meaty flavour to the boiling water.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens and balances the rich, spiced sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring in the flour and curry powder. Flour thickens only when it is cooked into the fat and then the liquid, and stirring keeps it from clumping or scorching on the base. Constant stirring during the simmer also prevents lumps and sticking.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, flour, vinegar, beef. 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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