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White Curry

A chicken curry made with butter, curry powder, almonds, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,814 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

White Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Add the sliced onion and stir without browning.

  3. Add the chicken pieces and cook for a few minutes.

  4. Sprinkle the curry powder over the chicken and stir for 5 minutes.

Make the almond milk

  1. Blanch the almonds, then pound them with a little water until fine.

  2. Strain the almond mixture, pouring the water over to create almond milk.

Simmer and finish

  1. Add the almond milk and salt to the curry, cooking slowly for about 30 minutes.

  2. Add the lemon juice a few minutes before serving.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Onion + almondtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,769 recipes

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

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 firms and turns opaque as it cooks in the sauce.
Butter
Carries the curry powder's fat-soluble flavour compounds and adds richness to the sauce.
Curry powder
Supplies the spice blend that gives the dish its aroma and warmth.
Sweet almonds
Pounded with water to make almond milk, which thickens and mellows the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, spiced sauce.

The step that matters

Stir the onion without browning it. Onion that browns turns bitter and darkens the sauce, while gently softened onion becomes sweet and keeps the curry pale and mild, as the dish intends.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, onion, butter, almond):

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Grapefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, onion, butter, almond. 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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