Name: Chicken Curry with Cocoanut
Ingredients: 1 whole chicken, cut into pieces; ½ cup cold water; 1 ½ cups tepid water; 3 tablespoons flour; 1 ½ ounces butter; 1 tablespoon curry powder; Toasted slices of cocoanut (for garnish)

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Chicken Curry with Cocoanut

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chicken

In a saucepan, combine the chicken and cold water. Cover and simmer until the chicken is tender.
Grate the coconut and pour 1 ½ cups of tepid water over it. Let it stand for 30 minutes.
Once the chicken is tender, remove it from the saucepan.

Make the gravy

In a bowl, mix the flour with the butter and curry powder until smooth.
Add this mixture to the chicken gravy and let it stew for a few minutes.
Strain the coconut water into the gravy, then return the chicken to the saucepan.
Bring to a boil once, then serve with toasted coconut slices on top.

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.

Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,902 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Chicken + flourtop 27% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together10,559 recipes

Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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 and, as it simmers, the broth that becomes the gravy.
Flour: Thickens the gravy as it cooks, giving it body.
Butter: Adds richness and carries the curry flavour into the gravy.
Curry powder: Gives the dish its spiced, aromatic flavour.
Coconut (in the method): Its soaked water gives the gravy a mild, sweet coconut flavour.

“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.