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Curry Chicken

A chicken stew flavored with curry powder, served over 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 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 ↓

Curry Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chicken

  1. In a saucepan, combine chicken, salt pork, onion, and salt.

  2. Add enough cold water to cover the chicken and simmer until tender.

Make the curry gravy

  1. Mix curry powder with a little water and stir into the gravy.

  2. Let it stew with the chicken for 10 minutes.

Serve

  1. Dish the chicken.

  2. Remove the onion and pour the gravy over it.

  3. Arrange the rice around 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. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 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

Chicken
Forms the main protein; simmering until tender makes the meat soft and easy to eat.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor that enriches the gravy as it cooks.
Onion
Releases sweetness and aroma into the broth as it simmers, then is removed.
Curry powder
Provides the spiced aroma and color that define the curry flavor of the gravy.

The step that matters

Stirring curry powder into the gravy. Curry powder is best mixed with a little liquid first so it disperses evenly instead of clumping, and the gravy then stews with the chicken so the spices bloom and blend into the sauce.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pork, 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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