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Sauce

Curries, Potter Meats, Etc

A coconut and curry-based sauce simmered with onions, garlic, eschalots, and gravy, served with lobster, prawns, or other meats.

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

Curries, Potter Meats, Etc

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Slice and fry the onions, garlic, and eschalots in butter until golden brown.

  2. Drain the onions on a sieve and place them in a clean saucepan.

Make the sauce

  1. Add the gravy and coconut, and simmer for 30 to 45 minutes until the onions are tender.

  2. Strain the mixture and return it to the heat.

  3. Mix in the curry powder, flour, and salt, then add the cream to form a smooth batter.

  4. Simmer for 15 to 20 minutes until ready to use.

Serve

  1. Serve with lobster, prawns, shrimps, or other meats, adding acid to taste.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Garlic + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Break down into sweetness and body that thickens the sauce as they soften.
Butter
Browns the onions and carries the curry flavour through the sauce.
Curry powder
Supplies the main spice aroma and flavour of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it clings to seafood and meat.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel.
Coconut
Adds sweetness, fat and a rounded coconut flavour to the gravy base.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and cream to the sauce. Flour mixed into hot liquid clumps unless it is first blended smoothly, and cream added to a boiling sauce can curdle or split. Keep the heat moderate and whisk well so the batter stays smooth.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Clovethe original

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