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Whole Chickens Curried

A whole chicken cooked with pepper, salt, pork, curry powder, and rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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, pork, and cover with cold water.

  2. Cook until the chickens are half done.

  3. Add rice and more water if needed.

  4. Boil until the chicken is tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Transfer the chicken to a dish.

  2. Mix curry powder with the gravy.

  3. Pour the mixture 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
Provide the main protein, which becomes tender through long simmering.
Rice
Thickens the cooking liquid and adds body to the gravy as it cooks.
Curry powder
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the gravy.

The step that matters

Boil until the chicken is tender. Chicken needs enough time in simmering liquid for connective tissue to break down. Stopping early leaves it tough, while adding rice and water changes the liquid level, so check tenderness rather than relying on the earlier half-done stage.

“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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