Name: Curried Chicken
Ingredients: 1 teaspoon curry powder; cold water; gravy from stewed, fried, or fricasseed chicken; a little lemon juice

Why it works: Chicken and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,092 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Curried Chicken

Ingredients

1 teaspoon curry powder
cold water
gravy from stewed, fried, or fricasseed chicken
a little lemon juice

Directions

Mix 1 teaspoon of curry powder with cold water.
Add the mixture to the gravy of stewed, fried, or fricasseed chicken.
Stir in a little lemon juice.

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.

Chicken + lemontop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,092 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Curry powder: Supplies the spice flavour and aroma that define the curry.
Gravy from stewed, fried, or fricasseed chicken: Forms the liquid base that carries the curry flavour.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity to brighten the flavour of the sauce.

“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.