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Chicken Curry

A spiced chicken stew cooked in ghee and water with ground spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Chicken Curry

Why it works: Turmeric and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,776 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Chicken Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the chicken into 16-18 pieces.

Fry the spices

  1. Heat the ghee in a pot until it bubbles.

  2. Add all the ground spices and stir until brown.

Cook the chicken

  1. Add the chicken pieces and salt and stir until light brown.

  2. Pour in the water and simmer on low heat until the chicken is tender and the liquid reduces by half, about 30-45 minutes.

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. Turmeric + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Ginger + coriandertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Turmeric + coriandertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,253 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Garlic + coriandertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Ghee
Carries the spice flavors and helps them bloom and brown in the hot fat.
Ground onions
Browns during frying to add savory depth and body to the sauce.
Ground turmeric
Gives the curry its yellow colour and an earthy flavor.
Ground chilies
Adds heat and reddish colour to the spice base.
Ground ginger
Adds a warm, aromatic note to the spice base.

The step that matters

Stir the spices until brown. Frying ground spices in hot fat releases their aromatic compounds, but they scorch quickly and turn bitter. Stir constantly and stop once they darken to a deep brown.

Swap the coriander

The recipe marks coriander as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ghee, onion, turmeric, ginger, garlic):

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Corianderthe original
  4. Clovefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against ghee, onion, turmeric, ginger, garlic. 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.

More chicken curry recipes

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