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Chicken Curry

A spiced chicken stew cooked with onions, ginger, turmeric, and spices, simmered in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 water until ready to cook.

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

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

Cook

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

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

  3. Stir in the curry paste until dissolved and mixed.

  4. Add the chicken pieces to the boiling water 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 butter and then cooks through in the simmering liquid.
Onions
Break down into the paste, adding body and sweetness to the curry base.
Butter
Carries fat for frying, helping the chicken brown and carrying flavour.
Flour
Coats the butter, helping thicken the sauce and aiding browning on the chicken.
Powdered ginger
Adds warm, aromatic pungency to the spice paste.

The step that matters

Frying the chicken until browned but not fully cooked. Browning builds flavour through the Maillard reaction. Stopping early leaves the meat tender when it finishes simmering, while overcooking at this stage makes it dry and tough.

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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with Rice 14Indian 9East Indian 5Whole 5Coconut 4Anglo-Indian 3 See all 164 →

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