Skip to main content
Drink

Curry Sauce

A savory sauce made with onions, carrot, celery, butter, curry powder, mace, thyme, parsley, bay leaf, water or fish stock, thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Curry Sauce

Why it works: Thyme and parsley 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 the butter and sauté the onions, carrot, and celery until tender.

  2. Season with curry powder, mace, and thyme to taste.

  3. Add parsley, bay leaf, and water or fish stock.

Thicken and finish

  1. Thicken with flour and bring to a boil.

  2. Strain the sauce and cool to remove fat.

  3. Reheat the sauce in a saucepan set over boiling water.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat for richness and carries the curry flavour through the sauce.
Onions
Soften into a sweet, savoury base that gives the sauce body.
Curry powder
Supplies the main spiced aroma and flavour of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth, coating sauce as it boils.

The step that matters

Thicken with flour and bring to a boil. Flour must be fully incorporated and brought to a boil so its starch swells and thickens the sauce. Stirring prevents lumps, and boiling activates the starch so the sauce sets to the intended consistency.

Swap the mace

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

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

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

More curry sauce recipes

Macaroni in 5Indian 4 See all 75 →

You might also like

Vegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesRaspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesBrown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipesBlackberry CordialBlackberry Cordial129 recipes