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Curry Pimento

A chicken curry flavored with curry powder, cayenne pepper, and lemon, served over boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Curry Pimento

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix curry powder, cayenne, and salt, then rub this mixture into the fowl pieces.

Cook and serve

  1. Stew the fowl in the stock over low heat for 30 minutes.

  2. Squeeze lemon juice over the fowl before serving.

  3. Serve on a hot dish with boiled rice piled around.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Pepper + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Lemon + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

What each ingredient does

Fowl
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender as it stews slowly in liquid.
Curry powder
Adds the spiced aroma and flavor that define the dish.
Stock
Cooks the fowl gently and adds savory depth and moisture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, spiced flavor.
Rice
Serves as a starchy side that soaks up the flavorful cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Stewing the fowl over low heat. A gentle simmer lets the connective tissue soften slowly, keeping the meat tender and juicy. Higher heat toughens the proteins and drives out moisture, leaving dry, stringy meat.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, rice):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Mangofits about as well
  4. Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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