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Another Way to Make Currie

A stew of chicken and onions flavored with curry powder, finished with cream and lemon juice or vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Another Way to Make Currie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Skin the fowl and cut it into joints.

  2. Soak the fowl in cold water for 1–2 hours.

Make the curry

  1. Melt the butter in a covered stew-pan.

  2. Add the fowl and onions to the pan.

  3. Brown the fowl slightly.

  4. Remove the fowl and strain the liquid.

  5. Mix the strained liquid with curry powder and stock or water.

  6. Add the fowl back to the pan.

  7. Stew gently until tender.

Finish

  1. Stir in the cream and lemon juice or vinegar before serving.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Onion + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,827 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Onion + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,646 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Onion and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,827 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

Fowl
Provides the main protein, which firms as it cooks and becomes tender with slow stewing.
Onion
Softens and turns sweet as it cooks, adding body and flavor to the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for browning the fowl and carries the flavor of the spices.
Curry powder
Supplies the main aroma and flavor, which develops as the spices cook in the liquid.
Stock or water
Provides the liquid that the fowl stews in, keeping the meat moist.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, mellow texture to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Stew gently until tender. Gentle heat lets the connective tissue in the fowl break down slowly. A hard boil toughens the meat and can dry it out before it becomes tender.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Strawberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, cream. 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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