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Chicken Curry

A chicken curry made with ghee, water, salt, ground onions, turmeric, chilies, ginger, garlic, and optional coriander.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Chicken Curry

Why it works: Turmeric and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,776 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Chicken Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the chicken into 16 or 18 pieces.

Cook the curry

  1. Warm a pot and melt the ghee until it bubbles.

  2. Add all the ground spices and stir until brown.

  3. Add the chicken pieces and salt, stirring until light brown.

  4. Pour in the water and simmer over low heat until the chicken is tender and the liquid reduces by half, about 30 to 45 minutes.

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. Turmeric + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Ginger + coriandertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Turmeric + coriandertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,253 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Garlic + coriandertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,474 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

Ghee
Carries the spices' flavour and browns them, adding richness to the sauce.
Ground onions
Break down while cooking to thicken the sauce and add sweetness and body.
Chicken (in the method)
Provides the protein; simmering in liquid turns connective tissue tender.
Ground turmeric
Gives the curry its yellow colour and a warm, earthy flavour.
Ground chilies
Add heat and colour to the sauce.
Ground ginger
Adds a warm, aromatic pungency to the spice base.

The step that matters

Browning the ground spices. Stirring the spices in hot ghee until brown toasts them and deepens their flavour. Stopping too early leaves a raw, dusty taste, while going too far scorches them and turns the sauce bitter.

Swap the coriander

The recipe marks coriander as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ghee, onion, turmeric, ginger, garlic):

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Corianderthe original
  4. Clovefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against ghee, onion, turmeric, ginger, garlic. 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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