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Chicken Curry

A curry made with chicken, butter, onions, garlic, and veal or mutton gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Chicken Curry

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 ↓

Chicken Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Fry the cut-up chickens in butter with sliced onions until they are a nice color.

  2. If using pre-cooked chickens, do not fry them.

  3. Cut the chicken joints into 2 or 3 pieces.

  4. Place the pieces into a stewpan.

Simmer

  1. Add veal or mutton gravy and garlic cloves.

  2. Simmer until cooked through.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Chickens
Provide the main protein, which becomes tender as it simmers in the gravy.
Butter
Adds fat for frying, helping the chicken and onions brown and develop flavor.
Sliced onions
Soften and brown during frying, adding sweetness and savory depth to the sauce.
Veal or mutton gravy
Supplies the liquid and meaty richness that forms the body of the curry.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma that mellows and deepens during simmering.

The step that matters

Fry the chicken until nicely colored. Browning through the Maillard reaction builds deep savory flavor in the butter and onions. Pale frying leaves the sauce tasting flat, so the chicken should color well before it goes into the gravy.

Swap the clove

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, onion, veal, 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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