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Chicken Curry

A chicken curry made with onions, butter, gravy, garlic, curry powder, flour, cream, and lemon, served over boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Chicken Curry

Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Chicken Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. In a pan, melt the butter and fry the sliced onions until light brown.

  2. Add the raw chicken pieces and fry until browned.

  3. Transfer the chicken and onions to a saucepan with the gravy and garlic.

  4. Simmer until the chicken is tender, about 30 minutes.

Finish the curry

  1. In a bowl, mix the curry powder, flour, and butter until smooth.

  2. Add this mixture and the cream to the saucepan, stirring well.

  3. Season with salt to taste and serve with a squeeze of lemon.

  4. Serve with boiled dry 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Chicken + garlictop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,850 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-ethyl-2,5-dimethylpyrazine (roasted, nutty).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  5. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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 gravy.
Onions
Browning in butter builds sweetness and savoury depth into the sauce.
Curry powder
Supplies the spice blend that gives the dish its characteristic flavour and aroma.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it becomes smooth and coats the chicken.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, softening the sharpness of the spices.

The step that matters

Mixing the curry powder, flour and butter until smooth. If the paste is added in lumps, the flour stays unevenly cooked and the sauce turns grainy or pasty. Blending it smooth first lets it disperse evenly so the sauce thickens cleanly.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, onion, butter, veal, garlic, flour, cream):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, onion, butter, veal, garlic, flour, cream. 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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with Rice 14Indian 9East Indian 5Whole 5Coconut 4Anglo-Indian 3 See all 164 →

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