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Curry, Calcutta

A chicken curry made with homemade or store-bought curry powder, butter, onions, coconut milk, lemon juice, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Curry, Calcutta

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curry base

  1. If using homemade curry powder, mix 1 tablespoon coriander seeds, 1 tablespoon poppy seeds, ¼ teaspoon turmeric, ¼ teaspoon red chili, ¼ teaspoon cumin seeds, ¼ teaspoon ground ginger, and ¼ teaspoon salt.

  2. Mix the curry powder with ½ cup butter until smooth.

  3. Fry the sliced onions in the butter mixture until lightly browned.

Cook the chicken

  1. Add the chicken pieces and fry until cooked through.

  2. Pour in the coconut milk and simmer gently for 15 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the lemon juice and serve with rice.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

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

  3. Coconut + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,648 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Chicken + coconuttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together808 recipes

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

  5. Butter + coconuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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 and juicy as it cooks in the sauce.
Curry powder or curry paste
Supplies the aromatic spice blend that gives the curry its characteristic flavour.
Butter
Carries the spices in fat, releasing their aroma and adding richness.
Onions
Browning softens them and develops sweetness and body in the sauce.
Coconut milk
Adds moisture and a creamy texture, with a gentle sweetness.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and coconut milk.

The step that matters

Lightly browning the onions in the spiced butter. Frying the onions until golden lets their natural sugars caramelise, building depth and sweetness. Pale, undercooked onions leave a raw, flat taste in the finished curry.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Mangofits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, onion, coconut, milk. 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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