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Malay Curry

A chicken curry with almond, onion, lemon, turmeric, cayenne, water, cream, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Malay Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the almond paste

  1. Blanch the almonds and fry them in a little butter until brown, being careful not to burn them.

  2. Pound the fried almonds to a cream with the onion and lemon rind.

Make the curry

  1. In a stewpan, mix the turmeric and cayenne pepper with the water, then add the chicken and almond mixture.

  2. Let it simmer for about 20 minutes.

  3. Add the cream and let it nearly boil.

  4. Before serving, squeeze in the lemon juice.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lemon + turmerictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,192 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Turmeric + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Almond + turmerictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together406 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Almonds
Fried and pounded into a paste, they thicken the sauce and add a nutty flavour.
Chicken
Provides the main protein; simmering in the sauce lets it absorb the spices.
Cream
Adds richness and body, softening the sharpness of the spices and lemon.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the finished curry.
Turmeric
Gives the curry its golden colour and an earthy flavour.

The step that matters

Frying the almonds. Almonds go from golden to bitter within moments. Browning them gently, without burning, gives a toasted, nutty flavour to the paste instead of an acrid taste that would carry into the whole sauce.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Cashew nutfits better
  3. Lentilsfits better
  4. Almondthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, lemon, chicken, turmeric, pepper, cream. 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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