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Curry Soup

A spiced apple and onion soup thickened with flour and served with rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and fry

  1. Peel and slice the apples.

  2. Fry the apples in 2 ounces of butter or dripping.

  3. Add the sliced onion, lemon juice, and curry powder.

Simmer and serve

  1. Cook gently for 20 minutes.

  2. Add the quart of stock and simmer.

  3. Thicken with a little flour, rub through a sieve, and serve with rice.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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
Soften during cooking to add sweetness and body to the soup.
Butter or dripping
Carries the curry flavour and helps the apples brown lightly as they fry.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it cooks gently, forming the soup's savoury base.
Curry powder
Releases aromatic compounds in fat and gives the soup its main spiced flavour.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavours and balances the sweetness of the apples.
Flour
Starch thickens the simmering liquid to give the soup a smoother body.

The step that matters

Thicken with a little flour. Flour clumps if stirred in dry, so it should be blended smoothly with a little cold liquid first. Simmering then cooks out the raw floury taste and lets the starch thicken the soup evenly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, butter, lemon, 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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