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 Curried
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the chicken as for a fricassee.
In a pan, combine curry powder and butter, then season with pepper and salt.
Stir the mixture into the chicken while it cooks.
Let it boil for one minute.
Serve with boiled rice on a separate dish.
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.
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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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Pepper + ricetop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together8,379 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together13,902 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
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Butter + ricetop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together9,645 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together19,958 recipes
Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Chicken
- Main protein that absorbs the curry flavour as it cooks in the sauce.
- Curry powder
- Provides the main spice aroma and flavour of the dish.
- Butter
- Carries the curry powder's fat-soluble aromatics and adds richness to the sauce.
The step that matters
Stirring the curry butter into the chicken. Curry powder is fat-soluble, so blooming it in butter before adding it releases its aroma evenly. Adding it raw or unevenly can leave gritty, raw-spice pockets and uneven flavour.
“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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