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Curries, Totted Meats, &C

A coconut and curry flavored sauce made from onions, garlic, eschalots, butter, gravy, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Curries, Totted Meats, &C

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Slice and fry the onions, garlic, and eschalots in butter until golden brown.

  2. Drain the onions on a sieve and place them in a clean saucepan.

Make the sauce

  1. Add the gravy and coconut (or other condiments) to the saucepan.

  2. Simmer gently for 30 to 45 minutes until the onions are tender enough to strain.

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

  4. Mix in the curry powder, flour, and salt to taste.

  5. Add the cream.

  6. Simmer for an additional 15 to 20 minutes until ready to use.

  7. Serve with lobster, prawns, shrimps, macaroni, hard-boiled eggs, or cold calf's head.

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. Clove + coconuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together458 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Soften and sweeten as they simmer, adding body to the sauce once strained.
Butter
Carries the frying flavour and browns the onions for a richer base.
Gravy
Forms the liquid base of the sauce.
Curry powder
Provides the main spice flavour and aroma.
Flour
Thickens the sauce slightly as it cooks.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, rounder texture.

The step that matters

Simmering after adding the curry powder and flour. Flour added to hot liquid can clump, and curry powder needs gentle heat to bloom without turning bitter. Stirring well and keeping the heat low helps the sauce stay smooth and well flavoured.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, garlic, butter, coconut, 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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