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East Indian Curry

A chicken curry cooked with flour, curry powder, and butter or pork, served with boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,417 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

East Indian Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Skin the chicken and cut it into small pieces.

  2. Mix the flour and curry powder together in a bowl.

  3. Dip the chicken pieces into the flour and curry mixture.

Fry and simmer

  1. Fry the chicken in pork or butter until golden brown.

  2. Place the fried chicken in a pot and cover with boiling water.

  3. Let it boil slowly until the chicken is tender.

  4. Mix the remaining flour and curry with a little water, then add to the pot.

  5. Boil for a few more minutes and season with salt.

Serve

  1. Serve with boiled rice, shaped like a snowball.

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 + porktop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,417 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Pork + ricetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

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

  4. Flour + ricetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Chicken + flourtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,559 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Chicken and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,559 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 as it simmers in the water.
Flour
Coats the chicken and thickens the curry sauce as it cooks.
Curry powder
Supplies the spice flavour and colour of the curry.
Pork or butter
Fat for frying that carries flavour and browns the chicken coating.

The step that matters

Frying the floured chicken until golden brown. Frying in fat browns the flour and curry coating through the Maillard reaction, building flavour before the chicken is simmered. Pale or undercooked coating makes the sauce taste flat and raw.

“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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