Skip to main content
Main

Chicken Curry

A chicken curry with onion, flour, curry powder, tomatoes, and milk, simmered until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Chicken Curry

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Chicken Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the chicken

  1. Season the chicken pieces with salt and pepper, dredge in flour, and brown in hot butter.

  2. Transfer the chicken to a stew pan.

Make the sauce

  1. In the same pan, fry the sliced onion in the remaining butter until colored but not browned.

  2. Mix 1 tablespoon of flour, 1 teaspoon of sugar, and 1 teaspoon of curry powder, and brown them in the butter.

  3. Slowly add 1 cup of water or stock and 1 cup of strained tomatoes (or chopped sour apple), and season with salt and pepper.

  4. Pour the sauce over the chicken and simmer for 1 hour or until tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Add 1 cup of hot milk or cream, boil for 1 minute longer, and serve with boiled rice.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Chicken + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,031 recipes

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

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

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

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; simmering until tender makes the meat soft and easy to eat.
Flour
Dredging coats the chicken and browning in butter builds color; flour also thickens the sauce.
Butter
Fat for browning the chicken and onion, adding rich flavor.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it cooks, forming a flavor base for the sauce.
Curry powder
Supplies the spice aroma and flavor that define the dish, bloomed in butter.
Milk or cream
Adds richness and a mellow, creamy texture to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the flour, sugar and curry powder in butter. Frying the spices briefly in fat releases their aromatic compounds, while the flour must cook enough to lose its raw taste and to thicken the sauce smoothly. Stirring constantly prevents scorching, which would make the sauce bitter.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, flour, butter, sugar, tomato, milk. 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.

More chicken curry recipes

with Rice 14Indian 9East Indian 5Whole 5Coconut 4Anglo-Indian 3 See all 164 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesChicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipes