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King Kalakua's Curry for Shrimps and Chicken

A coconut-based curry with shrimp or chicken, flavored with garlic, ginger, onion, curry powder, and thickened with cornstarch.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

King Kalakua's Curry for Shrimps and Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curry base

  1. Grate the coconut, garlic, and ginger.

  2. Add onion, curry powder, and milk to the mixture.

  3. Simmer on the stove for about an hour until the oil is extracted from the coconut.

  4. Strain the mixture, pressing the coconut dry.

Finish the shrimp curry

  1. Heat the mixture again.

  2. Add butter, salt, and cornstarch to achieve a creamy consistency.

  3. Add the shrimp and heat through.

Make the chicken curry

  1. Prepare the curry mixture without onion.

  2. In a pan, heat butter. Add chicken pieces and stir until glazed.

  3. Add just enough water to cook the chicken thoroughly. Mix in the curry mixture and thicken with cornstarch.

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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Ginger + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Coconut + gingertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,168 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Coconut
Gives the curry its richness and flavour as its oil is extracted during simmering.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid base that the curry simmers and thickens in.
Curry powder
Provides the spice blend that gives the curry its characteristic aroma and flavour.
Cornstarch
Thickens the curry to a creamy consistency.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the chicken brown and glaze.
Shrimps
Provides the main protein in the shrimp version, cooked through in the hot curry.

The step that matters

Simmer until the oil is extracted from the coconut. Simmering long enough releases the coconut's oil and flavour into the milk. Stopping early leaves the curry thin and bland.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (coconut, clove, garlic, ginger, nutmeg, chicken, milk):

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against coconut, clove, garlic, ginger, nutmeg, chicken, milk. 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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