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An Indian Receipt

A chicken stew with apple, onions, coconut, tamarind, curry powder, and rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 20 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 29,058 recipes mention both. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

An Indian Receipt

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the fowl

  1. Roast the fowl before a 400°F (200°C) fire for 30 minutes, basting with butter.

  2. Let the fowl cool, then cut the white meat into 1-inch pieces.

Make the curry

  1. Fry the apple, onions, garlic, and lettuce in the remaining butter until tender but not browned.

  2. Break the fowl bones and add them to a stewpan with the trimmings, vegetables, cocoa-nut, tamarinds, curry powder, flour, salt, mint, sugar, and water.

  3. Boil for 1.5 hours.

  4. Strain through a fine sieve.

  5. Add the stock and fowl pieces to the strained liquid.

  6. Simmer gently for 45 minutes.

  7. Stir in the lemon juice and cream.

Cook the rice and serve

  1. Wash the rice.

  2. Put the rice in cold water with salt.

  3. Boil slowly for 25 minutes, stirring frequently.

  4. Drain the rice.

  5. Stir with a wooden fork to separate the grains.

  6. Serve immediately with boiled rice and cut lemons.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Lettuce + tamarindtop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together20 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Clove + tamarindtop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together145 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Apple + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Garlic + tamarindtop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together395 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Fowl
Provides the meat and, through its bones, the rich body of the curry sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness while frying and basting the fowl.
Onions
Break down into sweetness and body that thickens the curry base.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced aroma and flavour that defines the dish.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the fowl pieces.
Rice
Soaks up the sauce and provides a neutral starch base for the curry.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for 45 minutes. Gentle heat keeps the fowl pieces tender and the sauce smooth; a hard boil toughens meat and can break the sauce. Cream and lemon are stirred in afterwards so they do not curdle under prolonged heat.

Flavor stand-ins for the cocoa

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, apple, onion, clove, garlic, lettuce, tamarind):

  1. Chickpeabetter flavor fit
  2. Cashew nutbetter flavor fit
  3. Beansbetter flavor fit
  4. Cocoathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, apple, onion, clove, garlic, lettuce, tamarind. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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