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Anglo-Indian Fowl-Curry

A spicy chicken curry with clarified butter, onions, and a blend of roasted spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cumin and turmeric match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,698 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Anglo-Indian Fowl-Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the curry base

  1. Heat the clarified butter in a pan.

  2. Add the sliced onions and sauté until golden.

  3. Stir in the ground coriander, cumin, mustard, chillies, and peppercorns.

Cook and serve

  1. Add the chicken and cook until browned.

  2. Mix in the vendium seeds and turmeric.

  3. Cover and simmer until the chicken is cooked through.

  4. Serve hot with rice or bread.

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. Cumin + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,698 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Coriander + cumintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,866 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Coriander + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,253 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Mustard + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Onion + cumintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,498 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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 firms and turns opaque as it cooks through.
Onions
Sweetness and body as they caramelise to golden, thickening the base of the curry.
Clarified butter
Fat that carries the spice flavours and helps the spices bloom and coat the chicken.
Chillies
Provide heat and pungency to the spice paste.
Coriander seeds
Add warm, citrusy aroma that rounds out the spice blend.

The step that matters

Stir in the ground spices after the onions turn golden. Ground spices scorch quickly in hot fat, which turns them bitter. Cooking them briefly in fat releases their aroma, so keep the heat moderate and stir constantly.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, butter, onion, coriander, cumin, turmeric):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, onion, coriander, cumin, turmeric. 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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