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White Curry

A curry made with fowl, onions, butter, curry powder, almonds, lemon juice, and water, simmered until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,655 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

White Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Make the almond milk

  1. Blanch the almonds.

  2. Pound the almonds with a little water until fine.

  3. Add the remaining water to the almond paste.

  4. Grind the mixture well.

  5. Strain the mixture through a strong cloth.

  6. Press the mixture hard until it resembles milk.

Cook the curry

  1. Cook the sliced onion in the butter until soft, but do not brown.

  2. Add the fowl pieces and sprinkle with curry powder.

  3. Stir over heat for 5 minutes.

  4. Add the strained mixture and salt to the fowl.

  5. Simmer until tender.

  6. Stir in the lemon juice just before serving.

  7. Serve with 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. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Onion + almondtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,769 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  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).

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

What each ingredient does

Almonds
Ground into a milk that gives the curry a rich, creamy body and mild sweetness.
Curry powder
Blooms in the hot fat to release aroma and give the dish its characteristic flavour.
Butter
Fat that softens the onion and carries the curry spices, adding richness.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, spiced sauce.

The step that matters

Press the almond mixture until it resembles milk. Pressing the ground almonds through a strong cloth extracts the liquid and fine particles that form the creamy base. If too much pulp remains, the sauce turns gritty and thick rather than smooth.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, almond, 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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