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Curried Gravy

A savory gravy flavored with curry, onions, and coconut, simmered with butter and cream.

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 Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the onion base

  1. Melt the butter in a pan and gently fry the sliced onions, garlic, and eschalots until they are a fine yellow-brown.

  2. Drain the fried mixture on a sieve and transfer it to a clean saucepan.

  3. Add the gravy and grated coconut (or other condiments) to the saucepan and simmer for 30 to 45 minutes until the onions are tender.

  4. Strain the mixture and return it to the heat until it boils again.

Finish and serve

  1. Mix the curry powder, flour, and salt into a smooth batter with the cream.

  2. Add the batter to the boiling gravy.

  3. Simmer for 15 to 20 minutes until ready to use.

  4. Serve with lobster, prawns, shrimps, macaroni, hard-boiled eggs, or cold calf's head, adding acid just before serving.

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
Break down into a sweet, tender base that gives the gravy body and flavour.
Butter
Fat that carries the frying and adds rich flavour to the base.
Curry powder
Provides the spiced aroma and flavour that defines the dish.
Flour
Thickens the gravy, giving it a smooth, coating consistency.
Cream
Adds richness and a softer, rounder texture to the finished gravy.
Acid
Added just before serving to brighten the flavour and cut the richness.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and cream batter. The batter must be smooth and lump-free before it goes into the boiling gravy. Adding it to a boiling liquid while stirring well helps the flour starch disperse and thicken evenly instead of clumping.

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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