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Curry Sauce

A buttery, apple-infused curry sauce made with onions, curry powder, flour, stock, lemon, and salt.

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

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Curry Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the chopped onion and fry without browning for a few minutes.

  3. Stir in the curry powder and a few drops of lemon juice, and continue to fry for 3-4 minutes.

  4. Add the flour and fry for another minute.

  5. Pour in the stock and add the chopped apples, stirring until boiling.

  6. Simmer gently for about 30 minutes.

  7. Season with salt and more lemon juice, adding more stock if the sauce is too thick.

  8. Strain the sauce 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.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

Butter
Carries the onion and spices, adding richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the sauce.
Onion
Softens as it cooks, adding sweetness and body to the sauce base.
Curry powder
Frying it in fat releases its aromatic compounds, giving the sauce its characteristic flavour.
Flour
Cooked with the fat, it forms a roux that thickens the stock into a sauce.
Apples
Break down during simmering, adding natural sweetness and body to the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and stock. Frying the flour briefly in the butter helps prevent lumps. Adding stock gradually while stirring keeps the roux smooth, and the sauce thickens as it boils and simmers.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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

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