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Curry of Chicken

A chicken curry simmered with onions, coconut, apple, curry powder, and finished with cream and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Curry of Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a large pan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Fry the onions, coconut, and apple until golden.

  3. Add the chicken pieces and cook until browned.

  4. Pour in the stock and simmer gently for 15 minutes.

  5. Mix the curry powder and flour with a little stock, then add to the pan.

  6. Continue to stew for another 15 minutes.

  7. Stir in the hot cream and lemon juice just before serving.

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

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

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

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

  3. Chicken + coconuttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together808 recipes

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

  4. Butter + coconuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Chicken
Provides the main protein; browning it first builds savoury flavour in the pan.
Onions
Frying until golden builds sweetness and a deep base flavour for the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it simmers, giving it body.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, mellow texture to the finished sauce.
Curry powder
Supplies the spice blend that gives the curry its characteristic aroma and flavour.

The step that matters

Stir in the cream and lemon juice just before serving. Cream can split or curdle when boiled for long, so adding it hot at the end and not letting it boil keeps the sauce smooth. Lemon juice adds acidity that brightens the flavour.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Mangofits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, onion, coconut, flour, cream, 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.

More chicken curry recipes

with Rice 14Indian 9East Indian 5Whole 5Coconut 4Anglo-Indian 3 See all 164 →

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