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Fowl Curry

A curry made with fowl, onions, ginger, spices, lentils, and ghee, simmered together.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Fowl Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the fowl into joints.

  2. In a bowl, mix sliced onions, grated ginger, ground black pepper, coarse sea salt, and ground coriander seeds.

  3. Boil the kabool ehennah in a little water until tender.

  4. Add the boiled kabool ehennah to the fowl.

  5. Drain the gravy into a saucepan.

  6. Mix the drained gravy with the curry mixture.

Cook the curry

  1. Heat ghee in a pan. Add cloves to the heated ghee and fry the cloves briefly.

  2. In a stewpan, fry the fowl in ghee until well browned.

  3. Pour the gravy over the fowl.

  4. Let the dish simmer for a short time.

  5. Serve hot.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  5. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Fowl
Provides the main protein; browning in ghee builds savoury flavour on the surface.
Kabool ehennah lentils
Cooked until tender and drained into the gravy, adding body and thickening the sauce.
Ghee
Fat that carries the spices and browns the fowl, adding richness and aroma.
Onions
Sliced onions soften and sweeten, forming the base of the curry flavour.
Coriander seeds
Ground spice contributing a warm, citrusy aroma to the curry mixture.
Green ginger
Grated ginger adds pungent aroma and a sharp, fresh flavour.

The step that matters

Browning the fowl in ghee. Browning relies on the Maillard reaction, which needs a dry surface and enough heat. Crowding the pan or adding gravy too early steams the meat, leaving it pale and bland with less developed flavour.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ginger, pepper, coriander, lentils, ghee, clove, cinnamon):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ginger, pepper, coriander, lentils, ghee, clove, cinnamon. 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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