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Sauce

Curry

A savory sauce made with onions, apples, curry powder, butter, and stock, thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Curry

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Curry

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Slice the onions and stew them in butter over low heat.

  2. Add the sliced apples and cook until mixed.

  3. Stir in the curry powder, vinegar, flour, salt, and sugar.

  4. Moisten with the maigre stock, milk, or water.

  5. Boil until thick, then strain through a fine sieve.

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

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

  2. Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Onions
Soften into a sweet base that gives the sauce body and flavor.
Butter
Carries the curry flavor and enriches the sauce with fat.
Apples
Add natural sweetness and mellow acidity to balance the curry.
Curry powder
Supplies the main spice aroma and warm flavor of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the liquid so the sauce becomes smooth and coats the spoon.
Maigre stock
Forms the liquid that is reduced to the sauce's final consistency.

The step that matters

Boil until thick. Flour thickens only when the liquid reaches a boil and is held there long enough for the starch to swell. Stopping early leaves the sauce thin and floury-tasting, while over-boiling can scorch the onions and make the sauce stick.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, apple, vinegar, flour, sugar, milk):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, apple, vinegar, flour, sugar, milk. 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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