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Chicken Curry

A chicken curry made with butter, onions, flour, sugar, curry powder, water or stock, tomatoes or apple, and hot milk or cream.

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

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Chicken Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Season the chicken pieces with salt and pepper, then dredge in flour.

  2. Brown the chicken in hot butter in a stew pan.

Make the sauce

  1. Fry the sliced onion in the remaining butter until colored but not browned.

  2. Mix 1 tablespoon of flour, sugar, and curry powder, then brown the mixture in the butter.

  3. Slowly add water or stock and strained tomatoes (or chopped apple), seasoning to taste.

Simmer and serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the chicken and simmer for one hour or until tender.

  2. Add hot milk or cream, boil for one minute, and serve with boiled rice.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Chicken + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,031 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 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; browning and simmering make it tender in the sauce.
Flour
Dredging coats the chicken and browning the flour with curry powder thickens the sauce.
Butter
Carries the heat for browning the chicken and onion, adding richness and flavor.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it fries, building the base flavor of the sauce.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced aroma that defines the dish once browned in butter.
Milk or cream
Adds creaminess and mellows the sauce when stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Browning the flour, sugar and curry powder in butter. Cooking the flour in fat until it darkens removes raw starch taste and lets the curry spices bloom. Stirring constantly prevents scorching and bitterness, which would carry through the whole sauce.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, flour, butter, sugar, tomato, 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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