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
Pluck the chicken and remove pin feathers from the chicken.
Singe the chicken.
Clean the chicken without washing.
Cut the chicken into joints.
Make the curry
Peel and slice the onion.
Brown the onion in a saucepan with the butter.
Add the chicken to the saucepan and brown the chicken completely.
Stir in the flour and brown the flour.
Pour boiling water over the chicken to cover it.
Season with salt and pepper.
Add herbs.
Simmer for an hour until tender.
Add the curry powder to the chicken.
Cover the pot and finish cooking.
Serve
Boil the rice according to your preferred method.
Serve the curry on a platter with rice on the side or encircle the curry with rice.
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.
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Chicken + ricetop 5% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,769 recipes
Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).
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Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together17,814 recipes
Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).
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Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together10,433 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
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Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together68,474 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Pepper + ricetop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together8,379 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
- Forms the main body of the dish and provides the protein that becomes tender during simmering.
- Butter
- Carries the onion flavour and helps it brown in the saucepan.
- Flour
- Browned in the pan and stirred in, it helps thicken the sauce.
- Onion
- Browns in butter to add sweetness and savoury depth to the sauce.
- Curry powder
- Supplies the spice aroma that defines the flavour of the curry.
The step that matters
Brown the flour. Browning the flour in the fat before adding liquid develops a nutty flavour and cooks out its raw taste, and stirring constantly prevents scorching and lumps in the sauce.
Swap the onion
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, butter, flour, pepper, rice):
- Capsicumfits better
- Potatofits better
- Leekfits better
- Onionthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, flour, pepper, 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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