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Curry of Chicken

A stew of chicken pieces simmered in butter, onion, flour, curry powder, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,814 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Curry of Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove skin, fat, and bones from the cold meat and cut it into small pieces.

Make the curry

  1. In a frying pan, melt the butter and sauté the chopped onion for 5 minutes, stirring frequently.

  2. Add the flour and curry powder, stirring for 1 minute.

  3. Gradually add the cold stock or water while boiling for 2 minutes.

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

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Meat + chickentop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Cold meat (chicken)
Provides the protein and bulk of the dish once cut into small pieces.
Butter
Carries the onion and spices in fat, adding richness and flavor.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a sauce as it cooks with the stock.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced aroma and flavor that defines the dish.

The step that matters

Gradually add the cold stock or water. Adding cold liquid slowly to the hot flour mixture and stirring keeps lumps from forming, so the sauce thickens smoothly as it boils.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, chicken, butter, flour):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, chicken, butter, flour. 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 →

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