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Curried Chicken

A chicken curry made with whole chicken, onions, herbs, and a sauce of roux, curry, egg yolks, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Curried Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Singe and draw the chicken.

  2. Cut the flesh into square pieces.

  3. Soak the pieces in cold water for 5 minutes.

  4. Wash the pieces well.

  5. Drain the pieces.

Cook the chicken

  1. Place the chicken in a saucepan.

  2. Cover with hot water.

  3. Season the chicken with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  4. Add sweet herbs and onions.

  5. Cook on medium heat for 45 minutes, skimming as needed.

Make the sauce

  1. In another saucepan, combine the white roux with the chicken broth and mix well.

  2. Prepare the curry by mixing diluted curry with egg yolks and lemon juice.

  3. Gradually add the curry to the sauce while stirring continuously without boiling.

  4. Pour the sauce over the chicken.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately on a hot dish.

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

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

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

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

  3. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the meat and, when cooked, the broth that forms the base of the sauce.
White roux
Thickens the broth into a smooth, body-rich sauce.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce as they gently set with heat.
Curry
Supplies the spiced flavour that defines the dish.
Onions
Add sweetness and aromatic depth to the cooking broth.

The step that matters

Adding the curry and egg yolk mixture. Egg yolks thicken by gently setting with heat. If the sauce boils after they go in, they can scramble and curdle, so the curry must be stirred in gradually and the sauce kept below a boil.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, nutmeg, egg, lemon, 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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