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A Currie Another Way

A curry of chicken or rabbit simmered with onions, curry powder, cayenne, and stock, served with crisp boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,769 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

A Currie Another Way

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Cut up the chickens or rabbits as for a fricassee.

  2. Fry them in a little butter until light brown.

  3. Place them in a stewpan with a little stock.

Make the curry

  1. Chop the onions very finely and add them to the stewpan.

  2. Fry the onions in butter gently for about 30 minutes.

  3. Add the curry powder and a little cayenne pepper.

Cook the rice and serve

  1. Boil the rice, then place it on a sieve to dry it crisp before the fire.

  2. Serve the curry on one dish and the rice on another.

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. Chicken + ricetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,769 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken or rabbit
Provides the meat, which is browned in butter to build flavour before simmering in stock.
Onions
Softened slowly in butter, they add sweetness and body to the curry sauce.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced aroma that defines the dish.
Butter
Fat for frying that browns the meat and onions and carries the spice flavour.
India rice
Boiled and dried to a crisp texture as the side dish served apart from the curry.

The step that matters

Frying the onions gently. Slow frying softens the onions and draws out their sweetness. High heat would scorch them, leaving a bitter taste in the curry.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, 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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