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Curried Dishes

A curry stew of chicken or veal with butter, curry powder, rice, flour, and cooking liquid.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Curried Dishes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Boil the meat until tender and separate the joints.

  2. In a stewpan, melt the butter and add the meat.

  3. Pour in enough cooking liquid to nearly cover the meat and let it stew for 20 minutes.

Make the sauce and finish

  1. In a bowl, mix the curry powder, boiled rice, flour, melted butter, cooking liquid, and salt.

  2. Pour the mixture over the meat and let it stew for an additional 10 minutes.

  3. Serve with boiled rice as an accompaniment.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Butter + ricetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

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

  5. Rice + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,611 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 or veal
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender through slow stewing in liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the curry flavour into the meat.
Curry powder
Supplies the spice blend that gives the dish its characteristic aroma and flavour.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a light sauce that clings to the meat.

The step that matters

Stirring the curry mixture into the stew. Flour mixed into liquid clumps unless it is fully blended first, and the sauce thickens only once the starch is dispersed and heated. Mixing the flour with the melted butter and liquid before pouring helps keep the sauce smooth.

“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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