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Curry Sauce

A sauce made with curry onions, butter, pepper, salt, chili, chutney or jam, lime juice, curry powder, milk or coconut milk, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Curry Sauce

Why it works: Pepper and lime match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,491 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Curry Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Fry the sliced curry onions in hot butter until browned.

  2. In an enamel bowl, combine the onions with pepper, salt, chopped chili, chutney or jam, lime juice, curry powder, milk or coconut milk, and flour. Mix carefully and bring to a boil.

Serve

  1. Serve with boiled fish.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Pepper + limetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,491 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Apricot + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together826 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  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

Curry onions
Soften and sweeten as they brown, forming the flavour base of the sauce.
Milk or coconut milk
Adds liquid and body, creating a creamy sauce that carries the spices.
Flour
Thickens the liquid as it comes to a boil, giving the sauce body.
Curry powder
Provides the main spiced aroma that defines the sauce.

The step that matters

Bringing the sauce to a boil. Once milk or coconut milk is added, it can scorch or separate if heated too hard. Mixing carefully and bringing it to a boil gently helps keep the sauce smooth while the flour thickens it.

Swap the apricot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, butter, pepper, lime, milk, flour):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Mangofits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Apricotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, pepper, lime, milk, 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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