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Whole Chickens Curried

A dish of whole chickens simmered with pepper, salt, pork, rice, and curry powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,417 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Whole Chickens Curried

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chicken

  1. Place the whole chickens in a saucepan with pepper, salt, and pork.

  2. Cover with cold water and cook until half done.

  3. Add rice and more water if needed, then boil until the chicken is tender.

Serve

  1. Transfer the chicken to a dish.

  2. Mix a large spoonful of curry into the gravy and pour it over the chicken.

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 + porktop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,417 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

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

  3. Pork + ricetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Pepper + porktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Whole chickens
Provides the main protein and flavour, becoming tender as it simmers in the liquid.
Pork
Adds extra meaty richness to the gravy as it cooks down with the chicken.
Rice
Thickens the gravy as its starch releases during boiling.
Curry powder
Adds aromatic spice to the gravy, giving the dish its curry flavour.

The step that matters

Boiling until the chicken is tender. Cooking the chicken in two stages, first partly and then fully with the rice, keeps the meat from drying out or turning tough. Cooking too hard can toughen the proteins, so a gentle boil is best.

“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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