Why it works: Chicken and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,902 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓
Selim's Curries
Ingredients
Directions
Melt the butter in a stewpan.
Add the meat and stir with a wooden spoon for 5 to 10 minutes, then mix in the curry paste thoroughly.
For a dry curry, serve after mixing; for a gravy curry, add boiling water and stir for an additional 10 to 12 minutes.
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.
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Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together13,902 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Chicken, fowl, veal, rabbit, or mutton
- Provides the protein; searing in butter gives the meat a browned surface and flavor.
- Butter
- Fat that carries the curry paste's aromatic compounds and helps the meat brown.
- Curry paste
- Supplies the spice flavor and aroma that define the dish.
The step that matters
Mixing in the curry paste thoroughly. Spices are fat-soluble and bloom when stirred into hot butter. If the paste is not evenly mixed, some pieces will taste bland while others are harsh or scorched.
“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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