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Chicken Currie

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Chicken Currie

Ingredients

Directions

Fry the base

  1. In a pan, melt butter and fry the sliced onions until light brown.

  2. Add the chicken pieces and fry until they begin to brown.

Simmer the curry

  1. Transfer the chicken and onions to a stew pan, add gravy, and simmer until the chicken is tender.

  2. In a bowl, mix curry powder, flour, and butter until smooth, then add to the stew with cream.

  3. Season with salt and simmer for another 30 minutes.

  4. Before serving, squeeze in 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Chicken + vealtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-butanedione (buttery, creamy).

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 through slow simmering in the gravy.
Onions
Browning and slow cooking build sweetness and savory depth into the sauce.
Curry powder
Blooms in hot fat to release aromatic spice compounds that flavor the whole dish.
Flour
Thickens the curry sauce when cooked with the butter and liquid.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, rounder texture to the sauce.
Gravy
Supplies the liquid base and savory body for the simmered curry.

The step that matters

Mixing the curry paste into the stew. Flour mixed with butter and curry powder must be smooth before adding, or it forms lumps that won't disperse. Cream should be added so it doesn't curdle, which is why gentle simmering rather than a hard boil matters.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Grapefits about as well

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