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Curried Gravy

A gravy made with onions, garlic, eschalots, butter, gravy base, cocoa‑nut, curry powder, flour, salt, cream, and acid.

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

Fry the aromatics

  1. Slice and gently fry the onions, garlic, and eschalots in butter until they are a fine yellow-brown.

  2. Drain the fried mixture on a sieve and transfer to a clean saucepan.

Simmer and strain

  1. Add the gravy and cocoa-nut (or other condiments) to the saucepan and simmer for 30 to 45 minutes until the onions are tender.

  2. Strain the mixture and return it to the heat until it boils again.

Finish the curry

  1. Mix in the curry powder, flour, and salt to taste, then blend with the cream to form a smooth batter.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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 long simmering to give the gravy body and sweetness.
Butter
Carries the frying of the aromatics and adds richness and browning flavour.
Curry powder
Supplies the spice aroma that defines the dish.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it becomes a smooth, coating batter.
Cream
Adds richness and softens the sharpness of the spices.
Gravy
Provides the savoury liquid base that the other ingredients simmer in.

The step that matters

Frying the onions to a fine yellow-brown. Gentle frying slowly converts the onions' sugars into browned, sweet flavour compounds. If they burn, the bitter taste carries into the whole sauce, and if they stay pale, the gravy lacks depth.

“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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