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Curried Fowl or Chicken

A curry dish made from leftover roast fowl, onions, apple, butter, curry powder, flour, gravy, and lemon juice, served over rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Curried Fowl or Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the onions.

  2. Peel, core, and chop the apple.

  3. Cut the fowl into neat joints.

Cook and serve

  1. Fry the fowl, onions, and apple in butter until browned.

  2. Add curry powder, flour, and gravy; stew for 20 minutes.

  3. Stir in lemon juice 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.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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 roast fowl
Provides the cooked chicken meat that is the body of the dish.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they brown, building the base flavour of the sauce.
Apple
Adds sweetness and a fruity tang that balances the curry spice.
Butter
Carries the frying and browns the fowl, onions, and apple for flavour.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced aroma that defines the dish.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so the sauce clings to the meat and rice.

The step that matters

Frying until browned. Browning the fowl, onions, and apple in butter develops deeper savoury flavours through the Maillard reaction. Pale frying gives a flatter, less rich sauce once the gravy is added.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, butter, flour, lemon. 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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