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Currie of Chicken

A stew of chicken pieces cooked with curry powder, onions, and a butter‑flour sauce.

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 ↓

Currie of Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Blanch and drain the chicken pieces.

  2. Combine chicken, 2 tablespoons curry powder, and ½ cup veal broth in a stewpan.

  3. Stew gently until half cooked.

Make the onion mixture

  1. Slice the onions, then place them in another stewpan with 1 tablespoon curry powder and 1 quart veal broth.

  2. Boil until the onions are tender.

  3. Rub the onion mixture through a tamis cloth into the chicken stew.

  4. Season with cayenne pepper, salt, and lemon or tamarind juice.

  5. Continue to stew the chicken until three-quarters cooked.

Finish the sauce

  1. Pour the cooking liquid into another stewpan.

  2. Add 3 ounces butter and a little flour and water.

  3. Reduce the mixture to 1½ cups.

  4. Strain the sauce through a tamis sieve back into the chicken stew.

  5. Let the stew simmer until the chicken is tender.

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. Almond + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Onion + peppertop 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, which becomes tender through slow, gentle stewing.
Curry powder
Supplies the dominant spiced aroma and flavor of the stew.
Onions
Break down when boiled and, rubbed smooth, add body and mild sweetness to the sauce.
Almonds
Pounded fine, they add body and a nutty flavor that helps thicken the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the sauce.
Flour
Acts as a thickener, helping the reduced sauce cling to the chicken.

The step that matters

Reducing the sauce to 1½ cups. Reduction concentrates flavor and thickens the sauce. Stopping too early leaves it thin and watery, while reducing too far makes it heavy and salty-tasting.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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