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Anglo-indian Fowl-curry

A spicy chicken curry made with clarified butter, onions, coriander, cumin, mustard, chillies, pepper, vendium seeds, turmeric, and water.

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

  1. Heat the butter, lard, or olive oil in a pan.

  2. Add the sliced onions and sauté until golden.

  3. Stir in the coriander paste, cumin pulp, mustard paste, and chilli paste.

  4. Add the chicken and cook until browned.

  5. Mix in the black pepper paste and vendium seed powder.

  6. Add turmeric and enough water to cover the chicken.

  7. Simmer until the chicken is tender and cooked through.

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 becomes tender as it simmers in the sauce.
Onions
Sweetness and body, as they soften and turn golden in the fat.
Red chillies
Provide heat and colour to the spice base.
Coriander seeds
Add a warm, citrusy aroma that forms the base of the spice blend.
Cumin seeds
Contribute earthy, toasted aroma when roasted and ground.
Black peppercorns
Add sharp, pungent heat that rounds out the spice flavour.

The step that matters

Browning the chicken. Searing the chicken until browned builds savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction. Adding water too early would steam the meat instead, leaving the curry flat and pale.

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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