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Curry of Chicken

A stew of chicken simmered with butter, onion, herbs, ham, curry powder, flour, and gravy, served over rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and 17,808 recipes mention both. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk, wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Make the curry base

  1. Combine the chicken, butter, onion, parsley, thyme, and ham in a stewpan.

  2. Cook over medium heat for a few minutes until the ingredients sweat.

  3. Add the curry powder and flour.

  4. Shake the mixture together for 5 minutes.

  5. Pour in the gravy or water.

Cook and finish

  1. Simmer gently until the chicken is cooked through.

  2. Remove the chicken.

  3. Strain the sauce through a sieve.

  4. Bring the sauce to a boil.

  5. Skim off any fat.

  6. Return the chicken to the sauce.

  7. Season with salt and lemon juice to taste.

  8. Serve with plain boiled rice on the side.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Chicken + oniontop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together17,808 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together14,036 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Thyme + lemontop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Onion + thymetop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together11,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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 and, as it cooks, flavours the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat that carries curry spice flavour and helps the onion soften.
Onion
Sweetens and thickens the sauce as it softens during sweating.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced aroma and flavour that defines the dish.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the chicken.
Ham
Adds savoury, salty depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Shaking the curry powder and flour for 5 minutes. Cooking the spice and flour in fat toasts the curry powder and cooks out the raw floury taste. Stopping early leaves the sauce dusty and flat, while the mixture must keep moving so it does not scorch on the base of the pan.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, butter, parsley, thyme, ham, flour, lemon):

  1. Potatobetter flavor fit
  2. Carrotbetter flavor fit
  3. Shallotbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, parsley, thyme, ham, flour, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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