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Currie Soup

A savory soup made with onions, butter, flour, curry powder, gravy, fowl, tamarinds, and salt, simmered for an hour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and tamarind match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 426 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Currie Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curry base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Add the minced onions.

  3. Dredge the onions with flour.

  4. Fry the onions until light brown, being careful not to burn them.

  5. Gradually mix in the curry powder until it forms a paste.

  6. Stir in the gravy soup and mix well.

  7. Boil gently until flavored with curry.

  8. Strain the mixture into another saucepan.

Stew and finish

  1. Add the fowl pieces.

  2. Stew slowly for 1 hour.

  3. Combine the tamarinds with ½ pint of soup.

  4. Stew the mixture to separate the stalks and stones.

  5. Strain the tamarind mixture into the soup.

  6. Add salt.

  7. Boil for 15 minutes 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.

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 + tamarindtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together426 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + tamarindtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together111 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 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
Softened and browned in butter, they build the sweet, savory base of the soup.
Flour
Dusted on the onions, it thickens the soup as it cooks.
Curry powder
Cooked into a paste, it releases its aroma and gives the soup its curry flavor.
Fowl
Stewed slowly until tender, it adds meat and body to the soup.
Tamarinds
Their tart pulp adds acidity that balances the rich curry.

The step that matters

Fry the onions until light brown. Onions that burn turn bitter and can spoil the whole pot, while properly browned onions add sweetness and depth. Keep the heat moderate and stir often.

Swap the tamarind

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Tamarindthe original

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