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Chicken pieces cooked in a butter and curry powder sauce thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and chicken are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,814 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

To Curry Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Brown the sliced onion in butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the curry powder and cover for a few minutes to cook.

  3. Add more butter if needed, then stir in the chicken pieces.

  4. Thicken the mixture with flour, stirring until well combined.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + chickentop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

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

  5. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 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

Onion
Browning in butter builds sweetness and savory depth as its sugars caramelize.
Butter
Carries the heat and adds richness, helping the onion brown and the spices bloom.
Curry powder
Provides the aromatic spice blend that defines the flavor of the dish.
Cooked chicken
Supplies the protein that the sauce is built around.
Flour
Thickens the mixture so the sauce coats the chicken rather than staying thin.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with flour, stirring until well combined. Flour must be stirred in evenly into the fat and liquid to avoid lumps; it thickens as it heats, so stirring keeps the sauce smooth and uniform.

Swap the onion

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

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

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