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Madras Chicken Pepper Water

A spicy chicken soup made with tamarind juice, ghee, onions, curry leaves, and peppered chicken pieces.

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

Madras Chicken Pepper Water

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the chicken into pieces as for a curry, then clean and wash it.

  2. Mix the ground currystuffs with the tamarind juice and add salt to taste.

Cook the chicken

  1. Add the chicken pieces to the mixture and set it on the stove to boil.

  2. When it reduces to half and the meat is tender, remove it from the heat.

Finish the curry

  1. In another pot, heat the ghee and add the sliced onions and curry leaves.

  2. When the onions are brown, pour in the curry soup.

  3. Add the pieces of boiled chicken.

  4. Cover the pot and simmer for a few minutes.

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. Tamarind + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together426 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Tamarind + chickentop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together89 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Tamarind + gheetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106 recipes

    Shared aroma: maltol (caramel, sweet).

  5. Ghee + chickentop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together144 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-undecalactone (peach, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender as it simmers in the spiced liquid.
Tamarind juice
Adds sourness that balances the heat and richness of the curry.
Onion
Browns in the ghee to add sweetness and savoury depth to the finished curry.
Ghee
Adds fat that carries the aroma of the spices and curry leaves.

The step that matters

Reducing the curry soup until the meat is tender. Simmering the chicken until the liquid reduces concentrates the flavour of the currystuffs and tamarind, and the meat needs enough time to become tender. Removing it too early leaves the chicken tough and the soup thin.

Swap the tamarind

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Tamarindthe original
  3. Avocadofits about as well
  4. Mangofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against ghee, onion, chicken. 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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