Skip to main content
Main

Curried Chicken

A chicken curry served with Patna rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Curried Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curry

  1. Slice the onion and apple, and put them in a saucepan with the butter; fry until brown.

  2. Add the coconut and curry powder, and cook together for a few minutes.

  3. Mix in about 1 teaspoon of flour, then add the milk; let simmer while preparing the chicken.

  4. Cut the meat off the chicken bones, fry in a little butter, and season with pepper and salt; sprinkle with a little flour.

  5. Add the chicken to the curry and let simmer for about 30 minutes.

Cook the rice

  1. Wash the rice and add it to a saucepan of well-salted, boiling water; boil for 8-10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

  2. Test the rice for doneness; it should be tender outside but slightly hard in the middle.

  3. Drain the rice in a colander and run cold water over it for 2-3 minutes.

  4. Place the colander over a saucepan with a little hot water, cover lightly, and let it sit for about 30 minutes until dry and fluffy.

Serve

  1. Make a wall of rice on a hot dish and pour the curry in the center.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  3. Milk + coconuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,648 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Chicken + coconuttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together808 recipes

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

  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 as it simmers in the curry sauce.
Onion
Browning in butter builds a sweet, savoury base for the sauce.
Apple
Adds mild sweetness and body to the curry sauce as it softens.
Curry powder
Supplies the spice aroma and colour that define the dish.
Milk
Makes the sauce creamy and mellows the sharpness of the spices.
Patna rice
Forms the starchy base that soaks up the curry.

The step that matters

Testing and draining the rice. Rice keeps cooking from residual heat, so pulling it when just tender outside but slightly firm inside, then rinsing, stops it turning mushy. Steaming it gently afterward dries the surface so grains stay separate and fluffy.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Mangofits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, milk, onion, coconut, butter, pepper, 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.

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipesRice FrittersRice Fritters84 recipes