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Currie of Fowl

A curry made with fowl, onions, gravy, curry powder, butter, flour, lemon juice, cayenne pepper, and sea salt, served with boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 of Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curry

  1. Fry the chopped onions until soft.

  2. Add the fowl and fry until browned.

  3. Stir in the gravy and curry powder.

  4. Let it stew gently for 45 minutes.

  5. Mix the butter and flour to thicken the sauce.

  6. Season with lemon juice, Cayenne pepper, and salt.

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

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

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Fowl
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender during the gentle stew.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook, forming the base flavour of the sauce.
Butter and flour
Form a roux that thickens the sauce to a coating consistency.
Curry powder
Supplies the spice blend that gives the dish its characteristic aroma and flavour.
Gravy
Adds liquid and savoury body that the sauce is built on.

The step that matters

Mix the butter and flour to thicken the sauce. Flour must be cooked in fat or stirred in well so it disperses without lumps; added raw or in clumps, it leaves the sauce pasty and uneven.

Swap the onion

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

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

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

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