Skip to main content
Main

Curried Chicken or Veal

A curry-flavored dish of chicken or veal with onions, thickened with flour and curry powder, served over boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Chicken or Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cook and season the chicken or veal as you would for fricassee.

  2. Fry the sliced onions in a pan until light brown.

Make the curry

  1. Thicken the gravy with flour and 1 tablespoon of curry powder mixed with water.

  2. Stir the meat and onions together until well combined.

Serve

  1. 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.

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. Onion + chickentop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  3. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

  4. Flour + ricetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Frying until light brown adds sweetness and savoury depth to the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the meat and rice.
Curry powder
Provides the spiced aroma and flavour that define the dish.
Chicken or veal
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked and seasoned before combining.

The step that matters

Thickening the gravy with flour and curry powder. Flour must be mixed smoothly with water before it goes in, otherwise it clumps. Stirring it into the liquid while it heats lets the starch swell evenly, giving a smooth gravy that coats the meat.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, chicken, rice):

  1. Okrafits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, chicken, rice. 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.

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipesRice FrittersRice Fritters84 recipes