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Sauce

Curry Sauce

A sauce made with onions, carrot, sour apple, butter, curry paste, curry powder, and stock, simmered and sieved.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Curry Sauce

Why it works: Onion and carrot are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 21,601 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Curry Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and chop the onions into small pieces.

  2. In a frying pan, melt the butter and fry the onions until they begin to change color.

  3. Chop the carrot and sour apple into small pieces and add them to the pan.

Make the sauce

  1. Once the onions and vegetables are browned, add the vegetable stock or water and simmer until tender.

  2. Stir in the curry paste and curry powder.

  3. Rub the mixture through a wire sieve to ensure a smooth sauce.

  4. Adjust thickness by adding less water if onions are small, and add bay leaves if desired.

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. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Carrot + appletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together680 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Butter + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Onion + appletop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,206 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Soften and caramelize into a sweet, savory base for the sauce.
Butter
Carries the frying heat and adds richness to the onions.
Curry powder
Provides the main spice aroma that defines the sauce's flavor.
Sour apple
Adds acidity and fruitiness that balances the sweetness of the onions.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and body to the sauce base.

The step that matters

Browning the onions and vegetables. If the onions are pale or undercooked, the sauce lacks depth and sweetness. Frying slowly until golden lets sugars brown, building flavor before the liquid is added.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, butter, carrot):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, carrot. 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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