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Chicken Curry

A stew of chicken pieces simmered with onions, garlic, curry powder, flour, butter, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Chicken Curry

Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Chicken Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. In a pan, melt the butter and fry the sliced onions until light brown.

  2. Add the raw chicken pieces and fry until they begin to brown.

Stew and finish

  1. Transfer the chicken and onions to a stew pan, add garlic, and pour in boiling water to cover.

  2. Simmer gently for 2-3 hours, adding more water if the mixture is too thick.

  3. In the last half hour, mix curry powder, flour, and butter, then add to the stew with cream.

  4. Season with salt and serve with a squeeze of lemon.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Chicken + garlictop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,850 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-ethyl-2,5-dimethylpyrazine (roasted, nutty).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Garlic + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,893 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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; slow simmering makes the meat tender and lets it absorb the sauce.
Onions
Browning in butter builds sweetness and body that forms the base of the sauce.
Curry powder
Supplies the spice blend that gives the dish its characteristic aroma and flavour.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks, giving it a fuller, smoother body.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, softening the sharpness of the spices.

The step that matters

Adding the curry powder, flour and butter. Cooking the curry powder and flour briefly in fat toasts the spices and cooks out raw flour taste, while stirring prevents lumps. Adding them only in the last half hour keeps the spices fresh and the sauce from over-thickening.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, onion, butter, garlic, flour, cream, lemon):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, onion, butter, garlic, flour, cream, lemon. 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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