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Curried Chicken

A chicken curry made with butter, onions, curry powder, flour, stock, sugar, lemon juice, served over boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Curried Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Season the chicken pieces with salt and pepper.

  2. Fry the chicken in butter until golden brown.

Make the curry

  1. In another pan, fry the sliced onion in butter until browned.

  2. Mix the curry powder and flour with a little stock until smooth.

  3. Add the stock, sugar, and curry mixture to the pan with the onions.

  4. Add the chicken pieces and boil for 2-3 minutes.

  5. Stir in the lemon juice before serving.

Serve

  1. Serve the curried chicken in the center of a bed of 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  3. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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; frying first browns the surface for flavour and colour.
Butter
Fat for frying that carries heat and adds browning and richness to the chicken and onion.
Onion
Softens and browns in butter, adding sweetness and savoury depth to the sauce.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce as its starch swells when heated.
Curry powder
Supplies the spice blend that gives the sauce its characteristic aroma and flavour.
Chicken stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding savoury depth and moisture.

The step that matters

Mixing the curry powder and flour with stock until smooth. Mixing the flour and curry powder with a little cold stock before adding it to the hot pan prevents lumps, since flour starch clumps when it hits hot liquid directly. Blooming the spice in liquid also helps it disperse evenly through the sauce.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

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

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