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Chicken Curry

A curry made with chicken pieces, spices, onions, butter, flour, and simmered in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Chicken Curry

Why it works: Turmeric and cardamom match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 667 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Chicken Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the chicken pieces in salt and water until ready to season.

  2. In a mortar, combine ginger, turmeric, black pepper, mace, cloves, cardamom seeds, cayenne pepper, and salt to taste.

  3. Add the chopped onions to the mortar and mix until a paste forms.

Cook the curry

  1. In a pan, heat butter rolled in flour and fry the chicken pieces until browned but not fully cooked.

  2. In a separate saucepan, bring enough water to a boil to cover the chicken.

  3. Stir the curry paste into the boiling water until dissolved.

  4. Add the chicken pieces to the saucepan and simmer until fully cooked.

Serve

  1. Serve the chicken with boiled rice, either on the same dish or separately.

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.

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.

  1. Turmeric + cardamomtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together667 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Ginger + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Clove + cardamomtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,114 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Ginger + cardamomtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,114 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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 browns in the butter and then cooks through in the simmering liquid.
Onions
Break down into the paste, adding body and sweetness to the curry sauce.
Butter
Carries the heat for frying and promotes browning on the chicken surface.
Flour
Coats the chicken during frying, helping it brown and lightly thickening the sauce.
Powdered ginger
Adds warm, aromatic pungency to the spice paste.

The step that matters

Frying the chicken before simmering. Frying only until browned, not fully cooked, keeps the meat from overcooking during the simmer. Browning adds flavour through the Maillard reaction, and the flour coating helps the surface brown evenly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, ginger, turmeric, pepper, clove, cardamom, onion):

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Corianderfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, ginger, turmeric, pepper, clove, cardamom, onion. 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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