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To Curry Macaroni, Parsneps, Vegetable Marrow, Cauliflowers, Onions, or Other Vegetables

A curry of macaroni and assorted vegetables simmered in butter, curry powder, flour, and sauce, finished with lemon juice and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsnip and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 669 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

To Curry Macaroni, Parsneps, Vegetable Marrow, Cauliflowers, Onions, or Other Vegetables

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Boil the vegetables until nearly tender, then drain well.

Make the curry sauce

  1. Slice and chop an onion, then fry it in butter until light brown.

  2. Add 1 teaspoon of curry powder to the fried onion.

  3. Add flour mixed with water to the fried onion.

  4. Let the mixture simmer.

  5. Gradually mix in melted butter and brown sauce or arrowroot sauce.

Combine and finish

  1. Add the drained vegetables.

  2. Cover the pan.

  3. Cook until ready to serve.

  4. Add a little lemon juice.

  5. Add a little cream just 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. Parsnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together669 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Parsnip + cauliflowertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Parsnip + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,054 recipes

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

  5. Cauliflower + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together179 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the curry sauce so it coats the vegetables rather than running off.
Butter
Fat for frying the onion and enriches the sauce with richness and flavour.
Curry powder
Provides the spiced, aromatic flavour that defines the dish.
Cream
Adds richness and mellows the sauce when stirred in near the end.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the rich curry sauce.

The step that matters

Add the flour and water to the fried onion. Flour mixed with water must be stirred in smoothly and simmered so the starch swells and thickens evenly; adding it lumpy or without simmering leaves a pasty, floury sauce.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsnip, cauliflower, onion, butter, flour, sauce, cream. 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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