Skip to main content
Main

Curried Vegetables

A mixed vegetable dish simmered in a butter, flour, and curry powder sauce with milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Beans and cauliflower match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 290 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Curried Vegetables

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Slice the potatoes and break the cauliflowers.

  2. Boil the vegetables in salted water with a little sugar for 10 minutes, then strain.

Make the curry sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Stir in the flour and curry powder until combined.

  3. Pour in the milk and stir until it boils.

  4. Add the vegetables and simmer until heated through.

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. Beans + cauliflowertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together290 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Carrot + beanstop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,443 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Peas + cauliflowertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together313 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Potato + beanstop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together655 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries the curry flavour through it.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, coating sauce.
Curry powder
Gives the sauce its spiced aroma and flavour.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, thickened by the flour.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour and curry powder until combined. Cooking the flour in melted butter before adding liquid helps prevent lumps and removes raw starch taste. Stirring keeps it even, so the milk thickens into a smooth sauce.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, carrot, beans, cauliflower, butter, flour, milk):

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, carrot, beans, cauliflower, butter, flour, milk. 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.

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesGreen PeasGreen Peas229 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipes