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Curried Oravt

A curry sauce made from onions, garlic, eschalots, butter, gravy, coconut, curry powder, flour, cream, and served with seafood.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 Oravt

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Slice the onions, garlic, and eschalots.

  2. In a pan, melt the butter and fry the onions gently until they are a light brown.

  3. Drain the onions on a sieve and place them in a clean saucepan.

Make the sauce

  1. Add the gravy and grated coconut to the saucepan and simmer for 30 to 45 minutes until the onions are tender.

  2. Press the mixture through a strainer back into the saucepan and bring to a boil.

  3. Mix the curry powder, flour, and salt into a smooth batter with the cream, then add to the boiling gravy.

  4. Simmer for 15 to 20 minutes until ready to serve.

Serve

  1. Serve with lobster, prawns, shrimps, or other meats, and add chili vinegar or lemon juice for acidity.

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. Clove + coconuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together458 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Garlic + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Provide the main body and sweetness of the sauce as they soften and brown.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and helps the onions brown gently in the pan.
Gravy
Supplies the liquid base and savory depth that the sauce is built on.
Curry powder
Gives the sauce its spiced aroma and flavor.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it becomes smooth and coats the back of a spoon.
Cream
Adds richness and softens the sharpness of the spices.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and cream batter to the boiling gravy. Flour mixed into liquid lumps unless it is first blended smooth with cream, so it must be a smooth batter before it goes in. Stirring as it is added helps it thicken evenly rather than clump.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Clovethe original

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