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Curried Chicken

A chicken stew flavored with curry powder, butter, onion, and broth, served with rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,769 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Curried Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the curry

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat and add the chopped onion.

  2. Stir in the curry powder and a few spoonfuls of broth.

  3. Add the disjointed chicken and bring to a boil.

  4. Cover and reduce heat to low, allowing it to stew gently for 30 minutes.

  5. If the mixture gets dry, add a little cream, broth, or water.

  6. Season with salt to taste.

Serve

  1. Cook rice in a separate saucepan.

  2. Serve the rice alongside the chicken.

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. Chicken + ricetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,769 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  2. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  3. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Whole chicken
Provides the meat that stews until tender in the spiced liquid.
Butter
Carries the curry powder's flavor and adds richness to the sauce.
Curry powder
Supplies the spice blend that gives the dish its characteristic aroma and flavor.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and body as it softens in the butter.

The step that matters

Stewing the chicken on low heat. Once covered and reduced to low, the liquid should only simmer gently. A hard boil toughens the chicken proteins and can scorch the sauce on the pan bottom, so keeping the heat low lets the meat become tender and the sauce cook evenly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Onionthe original
  4. Tomatofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, rice. 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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