Topic: Curry Base - Scaling Up & Scaling Down

[Cory Ander]

Hi All,

I plan to cook a Prawn Madras tomorrow.  The prawns are about 9 inches long and there are only 10 of them to a kilo! (see photo ;D)

Therefore, I knocked up a new curry base, today, to ensure that I make an absolutely top notch curry sauce to do them sufficient justice. 

I normally use 2kg of onions (about 10 medium sized onions) to make about 7 litres of curry base, which I subsequently freeze in 285ml or 500ml pots. 

To satisfy my curiousity, I simultaneously made another batch at 1/4 of the scale (i.e. about 500g of onions...or about 3 medium sized onions) to see if the curry bases turned out similar. 

I simply factored everything by 1/4, except for the size of the cooking pot and the cooking times.  I used a 14 litre stock pot for the main batch and a 7 litre stock pot for the smaller batch.  The total cooking time for the main batch was about 4 hours and that for the smaller batch was about 3 hours.

The two curry bases ended up so similar (with respect to their appearance, smell and taste) as to be basically identical (see photo).  It seems to me that this particular base (and I suspect many, if not all, others) can be successfully scaled up and down to whatever the desired quantity (making a suitable adjustment for cooking times). 

[Jethro]

"The prawns are about 9 inches long"

Prawns!!!!, thems bloody lobsters 

PS, sorry for lack of input over last 2 weeks been in Mexico sampling chillies _

[mike travis]

All in the name of research no doubt. Hope you had a good time.

[George]

I simply factored everything by 1/4...The two curry bases ended up so similar (with respect to their appearance, smell and taste) as to be basically identical

I agree and am not surprised by your finding. It's always been my experience with anything from Indian food to cakes. I simply do not subscribe to claims that a base sauce or anything will change if scaled down. It's so much more practical to try a new base sauce or something with manageable/affordable/viable quantites like 2 or 3 onions, rather than a huge stock pot full of onions.

Regards
George

[haldi]

Cooking is a chemical reaction
Certain things need a set quantity to work
For instance how small could you scale down making bread?
Surely at a certain point the yeast/sugar would not create a rise.

I think there is something like this with the spices
I know one takeaway that uses a very hot "restaurant" spice mixture
Their curry base, however, is very mild
Therefore they cannot put much spice in
Scaling their recipe down to perhaps a six onion base simply doesn't generate the same intensity of aroma or underlying flavour

One time I was at a takeaway when they were preparing the curry gravy
Part of the procedure was scooping off litres of oil from a boiling onion/oil/water/tomato mix and frying ginger/garlic puree in it
After five minutes they added loads of tomato puree and a large quantity of spice mixture (maybe 250g)
It was at this point that the wonderful indian restaurant aroma happened
It was absolutely amazing
And this aroma/flavour gets right into the curry gravy
Of course I tried this scaled down at home
Guess what?
It just doesn't happen
Very disappointing
I could see no point in posting another recipe that doesn't work
Also I don't have the chefs permision to do so
However, I can say it was extremely similar to ifindforu's recipe

[Cory Ander]

Cooking is a chemical reaction
Certain things need a set quantity to work
For instance how small could you scale down making bread?
Surely at a certain point the yeast/sugar would not create a rise.

I'm not too sure what you're trying to say here haldi?  You seem to be saying that scaling down has practical limits and can't be achieved because of constraints of chemical reactions? 

I agree that cooking is partly chemical in nature, but it is partly physical too.  Chemical reactions occur at the atomic and molecular level and, as such, are unlikely to present practical constraints to scaling down.  Yes, things have to be present in the right (atomic and molecular) proportions, but yeast reacting with sugar will occur at the molecular level nevertheless. 

Physical aspects are more likely to present practical constraints to scaling down; such as in the bread example you give.  The smallest size of bread that could be produced would more likely be determined by an ability to maintain the breads physical attributes (e.g. pore size, crust thickness, overall structure, etc). 

It will also be constrained by the physical aspects of the starting ingredients (e.g. particle size, morphology, etc).   Nevertheless, I reckon it would be possible to make very small breads indeed (given the right conditions)?..undoubtedly smaller than is practical to consider in the context of this debate at least.

Nano-naans anyone?

I think there is something like this with the spices
I know one takeaway that uses a very hot "restaurant" spice mixture
Their curry base, however, is very mild
Therefore they cannot put much spice in
Scaling their recipe down to perhaps a six onion base simply doesn't generate the same intensity of aroma or underlying flavour

I'm confused by your argument here haldi?  In theory, provided the same ratio of base to spice mix is maintained, the same hotness will be achieved?  In theory, this could be done on a very small scale indeed (again, much smaller than is relevant to this debate).  Maybe their practical limit is a pinch of spice mix to maybe 100ml of curry base?

I agree that you will not get the same overall "intensity" of aroma from a scaled down version (because their will be less of it in the air to smell!), but you would still get the same SPECIFIC "intensity" of aroma (i.e. per unit volume of base/spice mix).  This would apply to the taste too.

One time I was at a takeaway when they were preparing the curry gravy
Part of the procedure was scooping off litres of oil from a boiling onion/oil/water/tomato mix and frying ginger/garlic puree in it
After five minutes they added loads of tomato puree and a large quantity of spice mixture (maybe 250g)
It was at this point that the wonderful indian restaurant aroma happened
It was absolutely amazing
And this aroma/flavour gets right into the curry gravy
Of course I tried this scaled down at home
Guess what?
It just doesn't happen
Very disappointing
I could see no point in posting another recipe that doesn't work

I put it to you that you are missing something else haldi?  To my mind, the more probably variables are temperature and time.  I firmly believe that you can successfully scale-down recipes if you pay sufficient attention to other factors such as time and temperature and overall heat energy and delivery of that energy.  That's not to say that it is necessarily simply, just that I believe it is practically achievable.

Nano-madras anyone?

[haldi]

The point I was trying to make is that despite numerous demos and recipes, a restaurant curry/gravy is better than anything I produce
I thought the intensity of flavour/aroma, even diluted down in the large volume of base, was proportionately stronger than on a smaller version
It certainly seemed that way when you were in the kitchen
Everything about me smelt like a takeaway meal
Perhaps it is all down to cooking temperature
Do you feel you have a 100% match with your cooking?

[George]

Cooking is a chemical reaction. Certain things need a set quantity to work.

Haldi

I can't say you're wrong about the importance of making industrial-scale quantities of a base sauce but I simply cannot subscribe to that point of view. Nothing I studied at school to A level chemistry or lots of technical reading since, has caused me to agree with anyone who says 'don't reduce the size of this recipe'. It may only be proved one way or the other once anyone can consistently produce BIR taste and flavour and can explain clearly exactly how it's done. I'm amazed that after so many years on this quest, we're not there already. I can't help wondering if one of the most recent and ambitious attempts to do just that (recreating BIR taste and smell in a domestic kitchen) is something of a fictional wind-up, i.e. on another forum!

>For instance how small could you scale down making bread?
One small bread roll! Easy - it works.

>Surely at a certain point the yeast/sugar would not create a rise.
I think it would, at least at bread roll size. But I make 'half a loaf' of base sauce and others insist you need to make a dozen loaves in terms of scale or it won't work. I don't agree.

>Therefore they cannot put much spice in
It seems likely

>Scaling their recipe down to perhaps a six onion base
>simply doesn't generate the same intensity of aroma
>or underlying flavour

I'd need to try it myself using the same recipe but I am sceptical if everything is pro-rata adjusted.


>After five minutes they added loads of tomato
>puree and a large quantity of spice mixture
>(maybe 250g)
>It was at this point that the wonderful indian restaurant aroma happened
>It was absolutely amazing

250g will produce more aroma to fill a room but if it only takes 2g of those spices in each finished dish, it will taste the same if you start with 2g out of 25g or 2g out of 250g.

Regards
George

[haldi]

But George,when you make one bread roll, you make a large quantity of dough and divide it.
That is how all the rolls are the same

[George]

Haldi

True, but I bet it would work if I made one roll from scratch. Anyway, to be more positive I tried Pacman's naan bread yesterday, which I found re-published within a post of yours some time back. I intended to try half a dozen naan recipes and see which is best, including Madhur J's, Cory's, Andy's and other recipes I have.

But the Pacman recipe produced naans which are at least as good as those from any BIR. So I'm not sure I need to look further. The naans look great too! I'm pleased to report this success story and - relevant to this thread on scale - Pacman already said his recipe was a scale-down from BIR quantities down to just 800 or 900g of flour. I scaled it down even further, to a mere 225g flour (so that's like maybe 5 or 10% of the typical BIR quantity) which made 2 or 3 medium sized naans in my case. The results were superb. This is another cr0-sourced BIR recipe which can almost be 'signed-off' as far as I'm concerned...no further work required. Many thanks for bringing the Pacman recipe to my attention and thanks to Pacman himself, of course, hoping he reads this. Do you still use it as your preferred naan recipe?

Regards
George

PS One aspect of this forum is SO IRRITATING. I corrected a typo after just 2 mins and the system tells the world that "Last Edit: Today at 10:41:18 AM by George". Now it will report a later time due to this amendment. Please make the edit time more like 10 or 15 minutes to avoid these irritating 'last edit' messages so soon after the original post is made.