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Chicken Curry

A stew of chicken pieces cooked with onions, butter, flour, curry powder, lemon juice, and optional herbs, coconut, and sour apple.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Chicken Curry

Why it works: Rice and coconut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,063 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Chicken Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the chicken

  1. Heat the butter in a stew pan until bubbling.

  2. Add the sliced onions and brown them.

  3. Remove the onions and add the chicken pieces.

  4. Brown the chicken thoroughly on all sides.

  5. Dredge the browned chicken with flour and cook until the flour is also browned.

  6. Slowly pour boiling water over the chicken, stirring continuously, until just covered.

  7. Return the onions to the pan, add the bouquet of herbs, and simmer until the chicken is tender.

Finish the curry

  1. Half an hour before serving, mix the curry powder with some gravy to form a smooth paste.

  2. Stir the curry paste into the stew, add the lemon juice, and remove the herbs.

  3. Cover tightly and cook until done.

  4. Serve in a border of rice.

  5. For added flavor, fry a sour apple with the onions or add grated coconut.

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. Rice + coconuttop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,063 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  3. Onion + chickentop 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. Chicken + coconuttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together808 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 main protein, which becomes tender as it simmers in the gravy.
Butter
Carries heat for browning the onions and chicken and adds richness to the sauce.
Onion
Browns to build sweetness and depth in the gravy.
Flour
Browns on the chicken and thickens the boiling water into a gravy.
Curry powder
Supplies the spice aroma and flavor that define the curry.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, spiced gravy.

The step that matters

Adding the boiling water slowly. Pouring the water slowly while stirring keeps the flour smooth and prevents lumps, so the gravy thickens evenly around the chicken.

Swap the apple

The recipe marks apple as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, butter, chicken, flour, lemon, rice, coconut):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Mangofits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, chicken, flour, lemon, rice, coconut. 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.

More chicken curry recipes

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

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