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Chicken Curry

Chicken Curry is a stew of chicken pieces simmered with onions, apple, spices, and a thickened sauce, served over rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Chicken Curry

Why it works: Chicken and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,769 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Chicken Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Clean and skin the chickens, cut wings at joints, separate legs and side bones, and cut the breast into four pieces.

  2. Soak the chicken pieces in water to whiten the flesh.

Stew and thicken

  1. Place the chicken in a stew pan and cover with water.

  2. Add minced onions, apple, white pepper, salt, and mace; cover and stew gently for one hour.

  3. Bruise curry powder and flour, mix with a little cold water, and thicken the sauce with this mixture.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the chicken and serve with rice either around it or in a separate dish.

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. Chicken + ricetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,769 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

  4. White pepper + macetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. Apple + ricetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,311 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken pieces
Provide the main protein, which becomes tender during long gentle stewing.
Onions
Break down while stewing to add sweetness and body to the sauce.
Apple
Adds acidity and a little natural sweetness that balances the curry spices.
Curry powder
Supplies the warm, aromatic spice flavour that defines the dish.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the chicken instead of running thin.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour and curry powder with cold water before adding it. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps and stays raw-tasting. Mixing it into cold water first disperses the starch so it thickens the sauce smoothly.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, onion, apple, mace, flour, rice):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, onion, apple, mace, flour, rice. 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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