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Curry Sauce

A sauce made with apples, onions, curry powder, curry paste, butter, water, and browning, simmered and strained.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Curry Sauce

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Curry Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare, core, and slice the apples.

  2. Peel and slice the onions.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the apples, onions, butter, curry paste, and curry powder.

  2. Simmer until the apples and onions are tender.

  3. Stir in a little flour.

  4. Brown 1 pint of water with browning and stir it into the pan.

  5. Add salt to taste and boil for 20 minutes.

  6. Strain the sauce before 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Apple + oniontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,206 recipes

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

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

Apples
Break down during simmering to give the sauce body and a mild fruity sweetness.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook, adding savoury depth and body to the sauce.
Butter
Carries the curry flavours in the pan and adds richness to the sauce.
Curry powder
Provides the main spiced aroma and flavour of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the liquid so the sauce becomes smooth and coats a spoon.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour before adding the liquid. Flour must be cooked into the fat and softened fruit and onion so it thickens evenly; adding it to liquid without cooking first can leave lumps and a raw starchy taste.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Applethe 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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