Skip to main content
Main

Curried Cheese

A cheese sauce made with butter, flour, coconut milk, curry powder, grated cheese, onion, lemon, salt, and cayenne pepper.

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

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Curried Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curry base

  1. In a pan, melt the butter and fry the sliced onion until light brown.

  2. Add the flour and curry powder, then gradually stir in the coconut milk to form a thin batter.

Thicken the cheese

  1. Continue stirring until the mixture boils.

  2. Add the grated cheese, lemon juice, salt, and cayenne pepper.

  3. Keep stirring until the mixture thickens.

  4. If not, pour into a jar while hot.

Serve

  1. Serve on strips of buttered toast.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  4. Coconut + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,648 recipes

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

  5. Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Carries the onion's flavour and helps it brown lightly before the liquid goes in.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a batter by binding starch with the coconut milk.
Coconut milk
Provides the liquid that turns the flour into a thin, pourable batter, adding richness.
Curry powder
Supplies the dominant spice aroma and flavour of the whole dish.
Grated cheese
Melts into the sauce, adding body, savoury richness and a thick, spreadable texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich cheese and balances the spices.

The step that matters

Keep stirring once the cheese goes in. Cheese proteins can clump or turn grainy and oily if overheated or left unstirred. Constant stirring over moderate heat keeps the sauce smooth as it thickens.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, coconut, milk, cheese, pepper, lemon):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, coconut, milk, cheese, pepper, lemon. 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

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesMacaroni and CheeseMacaroni and Cheese102 recipesCheese MakingCheese Making50 recipesCheese FrittersCheese Fritters34 recipes