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Another Way to Make Currie

A stew of fowl, onions, butter, curry powder, stock, cream, and lemon juice or vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Another Way to Make Currie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fowl

  1. Skin the fowl and cut it into joints.

  2. Soak in cold water for 1-2 hours.

Make the curry

  1. In a covered stew-pan, melt the butter and add the fowl and onions.

  2. Brown the fowl slightly, then remove it and strain the liquid.

  3. Mix the strained liquid with curry powder and stock or water.

  4. Add the fowl back to the pan and stew gently until tender.

  5. Before serving, stir in the cream and lemon juice or vinegar.

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. Tea + lemontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together610 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Onion + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,827 recipes

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

Onion and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,827 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

Fowl
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender through gentle stewing in the sauce.
Butter
Carries the curry powder's fat-soluble aromatic compounds and adds richness to the sauce.
Curry powder
Supplies the spice flavour and aroma that define the dish.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, mellow texture to the finished sauce.
Lemon juice or vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the cream.

The step that matters

Stew gently until tender. Slow, gentle heat breaks down the connective tissue in the fowl, making it tender. Vigorous boiling toughens the meat and can leave the sauce rough, so keep the pan at a low simmer.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, tea, cream, lemon):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, tea, 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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