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A chicken curry simmered with coconut milk, broth, and spices, flavored with chutney, sweet‑acid, and optional almond and ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Coconut and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,093 recipes. Both carry 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine, which smells cocoa, roasted. The science ↓

Our Curries

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Heat butter in a pan and sauté chopped shallot for 2 minutes.

  2. Add chicken pieces and lightly fry until slightly colored.

  3. Transfer chicken to a stew pan with curry gravy and let marinate for at least 30 minutes.

Simmer and season

  1. Place stew pan over gentle heat; add stock or water if needed to cover chicken.

  2. Simmer gently, adding bay leaf, chutney, and sweet-acid.

  3. If using powder, add pounded almond, coconut, spices, and grated ginger.

  4. Taste the curry gravy and adjust acidity or sweetness as needed.

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. Coconut + almondtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,093 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  2. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Shallot + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together75 recipes

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

  4. Coconut + gingertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,168 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Flour + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken pieces
Provide the main protein, which firms and turns opaque as it cooks in the gravy.
Butter
Carries the curry flavours and browns the shallot and chicken lightly at the start.
Shallot
Adds a mild sweet aromatic base that deepens the gravy as it softens in fat.
Coconut milk
Adds richness and body, giving the gravy a creamy texture.
Flour
Thickens the gravy slightly so it clings to the chicken.

The step that matters

Gentle simmer after adding liquid. Boiling vigorously toughens chicken proteins and can split the coconut milk, so keep the gravy at a gentle simmer until the chicken is cooked through.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (coconut, milk, flour, butter, shallot, chicken, almond):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against coconut, milk, flour, butter, shallot, chicken, 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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