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Curried Gravy

A savory gravy flavored with onions, garlic, eschalots, butter, coconut, and curry spices.

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

Make the base

  1. Slice the onions, garlic, and eschalots.

  2. In a pan, gently sauté them in butter until they are a fine yellow-brown.

  3. Transfer the sautéed mixture to a clean saucepan.

Simmer and finish

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

  2. Press the mixture through a strainer for a delicate curry.

  3. Return the strained gravy to the heat and mix in the flour and salt to create a smooth batter.

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 + coconuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 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. Coconut + appletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together274 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylethanol (rose, floral).

  5. Onion + coconuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,831 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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 give the gravy body and a sweet, savoury base.
Butter
Gently cooks the onions to a golden colour and adds richness and flavour.
Flour
Thickens the strained gravy into a smooth, coating consistency.
Rasped coconut
Adds subtle sweetness and body to the curry gravy.

The step that matters

Sautéing the onions in butter. Cooking over gentle heat until fine yellow-brown develops sweetness and depth through browning. Burning gives bitterness, so low heat and attention matter.

Swap the garlic

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

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

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