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Curry of Chicken, Dry

A dry chicken curry cooked with onions, butter, Madras curry powder, cream, and served with buttered rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Curry of Chicken, Dry

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chicken

  1. In a sauté pan, melt the butter over low heat.

  2. Add the diced onion and chicken fillets; cook for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

  3. Stir in the curry powder and transfer the chicken to an entree dish.

Finish and serve

  1. Add cream to the sauté pan to combine with the remaining juices and curry powder, then pour over the chicken.

  2. Serve with boiled rice sautéed in a little butter and sprinkled with dry curry powder.

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

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

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

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

  3. Onion + chickentop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken fillets
Provide the main protein, which becomes tender as it cooks gently in butter.
Spanish onion
Softens and sweetens as it cooks, adding savoury flavour to the sauce base.
Butter
Carries the heat and adds richness, helping the onion and chicken cook without browning hard.
Madras curry powder
Supplies the spice flavour that coats the chicken and mixes into the pan juices.
Cream
Adds fat and body, mellowing the curry and thickening the pan juices into a sauce.

The step that matters

Cook over low heat. Gentle heat for 30 minutes lets the chicken cook through and turn tender without drying out. Higher heat would toughen the meat and could scorch the butter and onion.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, chicken, cream, rice):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Onionthe original
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Asparagusfits about as well

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

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