Skip to main content
Main

Curry Sauce

A sauce made with butter, onion, apple, curry powder, rice flour, stock, lemon juice, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Curry Sauce

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Curry Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a pan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Fry the chopped apple and onion in the butter until softened.

  3. Add the curry powder and rice flour, and fry well without browning.

  4. Gradually add the stock, stirring continuously.

  5. Allow the sauce to simmer for 40 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the sauce and reheat it.

  2. Stir in the lemon juice and cream before serving.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

  3. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Apple + ricetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,311 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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
Carries the aromatics and gives the sauce a rich, smooth fat base.
Curry powder
Supplies the main spice aroma and flavour of the sauce.
Rice flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce as it cooks.
Light-colored stock
Forms the liquid body of the sauce.
Chopped apple
Adds subtle sweetness that softens the sharpness of the spices.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the sauce.

The step that matters

Fry the curry powder and rice flour without browning. Frying the spices and flour in fat releases their aroma and cooks out the raw flour taste. Browning would make the sauce bitter and dark, and it would also weaken the thickening power of the flour.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, onion, rice, flour, lemon, cream):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, rice, flour, lemon, cream. 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

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesRice FrittersRice Fritters84 recipesSteamed RiceSteamed Rice48 recipesApple SoupApple Soup33 recipes