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Curried Dishes

A curry made with chicken or veal, curry powder, rice, and butter, simmered in cooking liquid.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,769 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Curried Dishes

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the meat

  1. Boil the meat until tender and separate the joints.

  2. In a stew pan, melt the butter and add the meat.

  3. Pour in enough cooking liquid to cover the meat and let it stew for 20 minutes.

Make the curry and serve

  1. In a bowl, mix the curry powder, cooked rice, flour, melted butter, cooking liquid, and salt.

  2. Pour the mixture over the meat and let it stew for an additional 10 minutes.

  3. Serve with boiled rice as an accompaniment.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Chicken + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Rice + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,481 recipes

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

  5. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

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

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

Chicken or veal
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender through slow stewing in liquid.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced aroma and flavor that define the dish.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a sauce that clings to the meat.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavor and smooths the sauce.
Cooked rice
Blends into the sauce, adding body and soaking up the curry flavor.

The step that matters

Pour in enough cooking liquid to cover the meat and let it stew for 20 minutes. The meat must be fully submerged and simmered gently so it stays moist and tender. Boiling it hard toughens muscle proteins and can leave the sauce uneven.

“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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