Skip to main content
Main

Currie, or Pepper Water

A stew of chicken with curry powder, veal broth, onions, butter, lemon, tamarind, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 ↓

Currie, or Pepper Water

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Blanch and wash the chicken pieces.

  2. Place the chicken in a small stewpot with ½ cup curry powder and 1 cup veal broth.

  3. Simmer until half cooked.

Make the sauce

  1. Fry the sliced onions in 2 ounces of butter until nearly done and browned.

  2. Add the fried onions to the chicken along with 1 cup veal broth, ½ bay leaf, lemon juice, and tamarind juice.

  3. Boil until the chicken is nearly done.

  4. Remove the chicken and place it in another stewpan.

  5. Rub the remaining ingredients through a fine cloth and add to the chicken.

  6. Mix 1 tablespoon flour with water to thicken the sauce.

  7. Add the thickened sauce to the stew.

  8. Boil.

Finish and serve

  1. Season with cayenne pepper and salt.

  2. Skim.

  3. Serve in a bowl.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + tamarindtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together170 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Tamarind + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together207 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Onion + tamarindtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together426 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Forms the main body of the stew, becoming tender as it simmers in the spiced broth.
Curry powder
Provides the main spice flavour and aroma as it cooks into the chicken.
Onions
Browning in butter builds sweetness and depth that carries into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the chicken rather than running thin.
Tamarind juice
Adds sourness that balances the rich butter and spices.
Veal broth
Supplies liquid that cooks the chicken and forms the base of the sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce with flour. Flour must be mixed smoothly with water before adding, otherwise it forms lumps that stay in the sauce. Thickening works because starch swells when heated in liquid, so the sauce must be kept simmering after it is added.

Swap the tamarind

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Tamarindthe original
  4. Coconutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, veal, onion, butter, lemon, flour, pepper. 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 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipes