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Curried Gravy

A savory gravy flavored with curry, onions, and cocoa‑nut, thickened with flour and finished with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 the onions

  1. Slice the onions, garlic, and eschalots.

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

  3. Drain the fried ingredients on a sieve.

Simmer and strain

  1. In a clean saucepan, combine the drained ingredients with the gravy and cocoa-nut.

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

  3. Strain the gravy.

Finish the curry gravy

  1. Bring the strained gravy back to a boil.

  2. Add the curry powder, flour, and salt.

  3. Blend in the cream.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Garlic + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,149 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 during simmering to thicken and sweeten the gravy so it can be pressed through a strainer.
Butter
Carries the frying of the aromatics, browning them and adding richness.
Curry powder
Provides the main spice flavour and aroma of the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the strained gravy as it is brought back to a boil.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, rounder mouthfeel to the finished gravy.

The step that matters

Frying the onions to a fine yellow-brown. Onions cooked gently in fat slowly caramelise, building sweetness and colour. Frying too hot can scorch them and leave a bitter taste that carries into the whole gravy.

Swap the garlic

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, cocoa, 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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