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Curried Chicken

A buttered onion curry with chicken, flavored with curry powder and thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and chicken are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,814 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Curried Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the base

  1. Brown the sliced onion in 2 tablespoons of butter in a pan.

  2. Add 1 tablespoon of curry powder.

  3. Cover and cook for a few minutes.

  4. Add more butter if needed.

Finish the curry

  1. Stir in the cold, cut-up chicken.

  2. Thicken the mixture with 1 tablespoon of flour.

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. Onion + chickentop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + chickentop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

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

  5. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked chicken
Provides the main protein and substance of the dish.
Onion
Browning builds sweetness and savory depth as it cooks in butter.
Butter
Carries the curry powder and adds richness and moisture to the pan.
Curry powder
Supplies the dish's spiced aroma and flavor, released by cooking in fat.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the liquid.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with flour. Flour must be stirred in evenly so it does not form lumps, and cooked long enough to lose its raw, pasty taste. Its starch thickens the sauce only when it is heated with liquid.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, chicken, flour. 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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