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Chicken Curry with Cocoanut

A chicken curry simmered with coconut and flavored with curry powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and coconut work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 808 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Chicken Curry with Cocoanut

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chicken

  1. Combine the chicken and cold water in a saucepan. Cover and simmer until tender.

  2. Remove the chicken from the saucepan.

Make the coconut liquid

  1. Pour tepid water over the grated coconut in a bowl and let stand for 30 minutes.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Mix flour, butter, and curry powder until smooth.

  2. Add the flour mixture to the gravy and let it stew for a few minutes.

  3. Strain the coconut water into the saucepan, add the chicken, and bring to a boil.

  4. Serve hot, optionally garnished with toasted coconut slices.

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 + coconuttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together808 recipes

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

  2. Coconut + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Coconut + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,315 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Chicken
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender through slow simmering in water.
Grated coconut
Steeped in water to release coconut flavour and liquid that gives the curry its body.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as it cooks, giving it a smooth, body-rich texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying the curry powder flavour through the flour mixture.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced aroma and flavour that defines the dish.

The step that matters

Mix flour, butter, and curry powder until smooth. If the flour is added as lumps it will not disperse evenly in the liquid and will leave floury clumps in the gravy. Cooking the flour and fat together into a smooth paste before adding it helps it thicken evenly and reduces raw flour taste.

Swap the coconut

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

  1. Coconutthe original
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Avocadofits less well
  4. Lemonfits less well

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