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Chicken Currie

A stew of chicken pieces cooked with onions, garlic, curry powder, flour, butter, and cream, finished with lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Chicken Currie

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt butter in a pan and fry the onions until light brown.

  2. Add the chicken pieces and garlic, then pour in veal or mutton gravy.

  3. Simmer until the chicken is tender.

  4. Mix curry powder, flour, and butter in a bowl until smooth.

  5. Add the mixture and cream to the stew, stirring well.

  6. Season with salt and squeeze in lemon juice before serving.

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. 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  5. Garlic + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,893 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

Chicken
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender through slow simmering.
Onions
Soften and brown in butter, adding sweetness and depth to the sauce.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced aroma and flavor that define the curry.
Flour
Mixed with butter and curry powder to thicken the stew.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, silkier texture to the sauce.
Butter
Carries the frying of onions and adds richness to the sauce.

The step that matters

Mixing the curry powder, flour, and butter until smooth. Mixing the flour and butter into a smooth paste before adding it to the stew prevents lumps, because flour clumps when it meets hot liquid directly. Stirring well after adding it lets the starch thicken the sauce evenly.

Swap the clove

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, onion, butter, garlic, flour, cream, lemon. 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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