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Curried Graw

A spiced onion gravy with cocoa‑nut and optional apples, simmered with curry powder and finished with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Curried Graw

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Slice the onions, garlic, and eschalots.

  2. Fry them gently in butter until they are a fine yellow-brown.

  3. Drain the fried mixture on a sieve.

Make the gravy

  1. In a clean saucepan, combine the drained mixture with gravy and cocoa-nut (and apples if using).

  2. Simmer for 30 to 45 minutes until the onions are tender enough to press through a strainer.

  3. Strain the gravy and bring it back to a boil.

  4. Mix in curry powder, flour, and salt to taste, then add cream to form a smooth batter.

  5. Simmer for 15 to 20 minutes until ready to use.

Serve

  1. Serve with lobster, prawns, shrimps, maccaroni, hard-boiled eggs, or cold calf's head, adding acid as 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.

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 + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

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

  3. Garlic + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Cocoa + appletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together52 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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
Break down into sweetness and body, thickening the gravy as they soften.
Butter
Carries the frying of the aromatics and adds richness to the base.
Gravy
Provides the liquid base and savoury depth for the sauce.
Curry powder
Supplies the spice and aroma that define the dish.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it forms a smooth batter-like consistency.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, rounder texture to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Straining after the long simmer. The onions must be soft enough to pass through a strainer, so the sauce turns smooth. Undercooked onions leave a grainy texture that cannot be fixed later, and the sauce should be brought back to a boil before flour and cream are added so the flour can thicken it fully.

Swap the garlic

The recipe marks garlic as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, butter, cocoa, apple, flour, cream, vinegar):

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Garlicthe original
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Turmericfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, cocoa, apple, flour, cream, vinegar. 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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