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Curried Gravy

A curry-flavored gravy made with onions, garlic, eschalots, butter, gravy, cocoa-nut, apples, curry powder, flour, cream, and acid.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 base

  1. Slice the onions, garlic, and eschalots.

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

  3. Drain the fried mixture on a sieve.

Make the gravy

  1. In a clean saucepan, combine the drained mixture with gravy and cocoa-nut (or other condiments) and simmer for 30 to 45 minutes until tender.

  2. Strain the mixture and bring it back to a boil.

  3. Add curry powder, flour, and salt, mixing to a smooth batter with 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. Garlic + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Cocoa + appletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together52 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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 into a sweet, savoury base that gives the gravy its body.
Butter
Carries the frying of the aromatics and adds richness and browning.
Gravy
Forms the liquid base that the flavourings simmer in.
Curry powder
Supplies the spice and aroma that defines the dish.
Flour
Thickens the liquid so the gravy becomes smooth and coats the spoon.
Cream
Adds richness and softens the sharpness of the spices.

The step that matters

Adding the flour with the curry powder. Flour mixed into hot liquid can clump if not first worked smooth with cream or a little liquid. Mixing it to a smooth batter before it goes in lets it thicken evenly.

Swap the garlic

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, cocoa, apple, flour, cream, vinegar. 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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