Why it works: Chicken and onion 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 chicken
Wash the chicken and place it in a stewpan with enough water to cover it.
Boil covered until tender.
Add salt and cook for a few more minutes.
Remove the chicken and set aside the broth.
Make the curry
In the same stewpan, fry the onions in butter until brown.
Remove the onions and add the chicken.
Fry the chicken for 3-4 minutes, then sprinkle with curry powder.
Pour in the reserved broth, stir well, and simmer for 5 minutes.
Mix the flour with a little water and stir it into the stew.
Add the beaten egg yolk and mix well.
Serve
Serve with hot boiled rice around the chicken curry.
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.
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Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together17,814 recipes
Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together42,912 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together13,902 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
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Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour and butter 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
- Chicken
- Provides the main protein, which becomes tender through long gentle boiling and then simmering.
- Onions
- Browning in butter builds sweetness and savoury depth as the base of the sauce.
- Curry powder
- Blooms in the hot fat and broth, supplying the aroma and warm spice flavour of the dish.
- Flour
- Thickens the broth into a light sauce when stirred in as a slurry.
- Egg
- Enriches the sauce and thickens it slightly as it is stirred in.
- Butter
- Carries the flavour of the onions and curry powder and adds richness to the sauce.
The step that matters
Stirring the flour slurry into the stew. Flour mixed with water must be fully smooth before it goes in, otherwise it forms lumps that do not disperse. Stirring well while the liquid simmers lets the starch swell evenly and thicken the sauce.
Swap the onion
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, egg, flour, butter):
- Leekfits better
- Chivefits better
- Asparagusfits better
- Onionthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, egg, flour, butter. 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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