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Curry Sauce

A savory sauce made with butter, curry powder, flour, stock, tomato, onion, and salt.

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

Why it works: Tomato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,633 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Curry Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Fry the onion until lightly browned.

  3. Add the flour and curry powder, stir, and cook gently for a few minutes.

Add the liquid and finish

  1. Add the stock and bring to a boil.

  2. Stir in the tomato and season with salt.

  3. Simmer gently for 20 minutes, then strain and serve.

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. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Flour + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + tomatotop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,918 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

Butter
Carries fat-soluble curry flavour and gives the sauce a rich, smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter, giving it body.
Curry powder
Provides the main spiced aroma and flavour of the sauce.
Onion
Browning adds sweetness and savoury depth to the sauce base.
Tomato
Adds acidity and moisture, rounding out the spices and body of the sauce.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens and the other flavours dissolve into.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour and curry powder. Cooking the flour gently in the butter removes its raw starchy taste and lets it thicken evenly. Stirring keeps lumps from forming, and gentle heat stops the curry powder from scorching and turning bitter.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, onion. 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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