Skip to main content
Main

Curried Gravy

A gravy made with onions, garlic, eschalots, butter, coconut, curry powder, flour, and cream.

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

Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Curried Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onion base

  1. Slice the onions, garlic, and eschalots.

  2. Fry them gently in butter until they are a fine yellow-brown.

  3. Drain the fried mixture on a sieve.

Make the gravy

  1. In a clean saucepan, combine the drained mixture with gravy and grated coconut or other condiments.

  2. Simmer for 30 to 45 minutes until the onions are tender enough to press through a strainer.

  3. Strain the gravy and bring it back to a boil.

  4. Mix in curry powder, flour, and salt to taste, then blend with cream.

  5. Simmer for an additional 15 to 20 minutes 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.

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 + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Clove + appletop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  4. Clove + coconuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together458 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Break down during simmering to thicken and sweeten the gravy body.
Butter
Fat that carries the frying and browns the onions for depth of flavour.
Gravy
Liquid base that the other ingredients simmer in and carry flavour.
Curry powder
Provides the spice aroma and character that defines the dish.
Flour
Thickens the sauce slightly so it holds body after straining.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, mellow texture to the finished gravy.

The step that matters

Simmering until the onions are tender enough to press through a strainer. If the onions are undercooked, they will not break down and the strained gravy will be grainy and thin. Gentle, sustained simmering lets the cell walls soften so the solids pass through the strainer and give body to the sauce.

Swap the clove

The recipe marks clove as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, garlic, butter, coconut, apple, flour, cream):

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, garlic, butter, coconut, apple, flour, 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.

You might also like

Apple SoupApple Soup33 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes