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Receipt for Making the Curry

A chicken curry simmered with onions, curry powder, garlic, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 ↓

Receipt for Making the Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the chicken and onions

  1. Fry the chicken pieces in a pan until nicely browned.

  2. In the same pan, fry the sliced onions until golden.

Stew and finish

  1. Add the fried chicken and onions to a stew pan with curry powder.

  2. Cover with water or veal gravy and add the garlic.

  3. Let it stew on low heat for 1 hour or until very tender.

  4. In a bowl, mix cream, flour, butter, lemon juice, and salt.

  5. Add the cream mixture to the stew and bring to a boil, then remove from heat.

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. 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. Cream + buttertop 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. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Browning gives colour and savoury flavour, while slow stewing makes the meat very tender.
Onions
Frying to golden builds sweetness and savoury depth that carries into the sauce.
Curry powder
Provides the spiced aroma and flavour that defines the dish.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce slightly when combined with the cream and butter.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the cream mixture to the stew. Once cream and flour are added, bringing the sauce to a boil and then removing it from heat helps prevent the cream from curdling and keeps the flour from clumping, so the sauce stays smooth.

Swap the clove

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

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

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