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Chicken Curry

A chicken curry simmered with butter, curry powder, onions, and almond milk, served over rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Chicken Curry

Why it works: Chicken and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,769 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Chicken Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Add the chopped onion and fry until soft but not browned.

  3. Add the chicken pieces and sprinkle with curry powder; cook for 10 minutes, stirring constantly.

Make the almond milk

  1. Blanch the almonds, then pound them in a mortar with a little water until fine.

  2. Add the remaining water to the almond paste and strain through a fine strainer.

Simmer and serve

  1. Add the almond milk to the chicken, then simmer gently for 30 minutes, or longer if the chicken is old.

  2. Season with salt and a squeeze of lemon juice before serving.

  3. Serve with well-boiled rice.

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. Chicken + ricetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,769 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  2. Almond + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

  4. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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, which becomes tender as it simmers in the sauce.
Butter
Carries the curry powder's flavour and adds richness to the sauce.
Curry powder
Supplies the spice flavour that defines the dish, bloomed in fat during cooking.
Onion
Softens into the base, adding sweetness and body to the sauce.
Sweet almonds
Ground into a milk that thickens and gives the sauce a creamy, mellow body.

The step that matters

Simmering the chicken gently. A gentle simmer lets the chicken become tender without the proteins tightening and drying out. A hard boil toughens the meat and can break the almond milk, so the sauce looks grainy.

Swap the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, butter, onion, rice):

  1. Sesamefits better
  2. Peanutfits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Almondthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, onion, rice. 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.

More chicken curry recipes

with Rice 14Indian 9East Indian 5Whole 5Coconut 4Anglo-Indian 3 See all 164 →

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