Name: Curried Fowl {Cary De Poulet}
Ingredients: 1 piece of butter (size of an egg); 1 onion, sliced or chopped; 1 fowl, cut into pieces; 1 teaspoon curry powder; ¼ teaspoon salt; 1 pint stock; 1 cup good cream; juice of 1 lemon

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Curried Fowl {Cary De Poulet}

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curry

Melt the butter in a stewpan and sauté the onion until colored.
Add the fowl pieces, curry powder, and salt; cook gently, turning frequently.
Pour in the stock and cook for 40-45 minutes until reduced to one-third.

Finish and serve

Stir in the cream and simmer for 2 minutes.
Add lemon juice just before serving.

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.

Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together42,912 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,227 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Onion + creamtop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together10,827 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

Onion and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,827 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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; slow cooking in the sauce keeps the meat tender and moist.
Butter: Carries the onion and curry flavour and adds richness to the sauce.
Cream: Adds richness and a smooth, mellow texture to the reduced sauce.
Stock: Forms the liquid base, and reducing it concentrates the flavour into the sauce.

The step that matters

Reducing the stock. Cooking the stock down to one-third concentrates its flavour and thickens the sauce. Stopping early leaves it thin and bland, while overcooking can make it too salty and strong.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, egg, cream, lemon):

Asparagusfits better
Leekfits better
Spinachfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, cream, lemon. 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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Curried Fowl {Cary De Poulet}