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Curried Gravy

A gravy flavored with curry powder, onions, garlic, eschalots, coconut, 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 ↓

Curried Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  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 grated coconut (and apples if using).

  2. Simmer gently 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.

Finish

  1. Mix in curry powder, flour, and salt to taste, then blend with cream.

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

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. Clove + appletop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Break down during simmering to thicken and sweeten the gravy base.
Butter
Fat that carries the frying flavour and helps the onions brown.
Curry powder
Supplies the spice aroma that defines the dish.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the spoon.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, mellower texture.

The step that matters

Frying the onions to a fine yellow-brown. Frying gently until golden develops sweet, deep flavour through browning. Burnt onions turn bitter and can spoil the whole gravy, so low heat and patience matter.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Clovethe original

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