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Chicken Curry

A chicken curry made with butter, onions, garlic, curry powder, flour, cream, and lemon juice, served over boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Chicken Curry

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 Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the chicken

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

  2. If using pre-dressed chicken, fry only the onions.

Simmer and thicken

  1. Place the chicken joints in a stew pan with gravy and garlic, and simmer until tender.

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

  3. Stir this mixture into the stew and season with salt.

Finish and serve

  1. Before serving, squeeze in some lemon juice.

  2. Serve with boiled dry rice.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender as it simmers in the gravy.
Onions
Soften and turn sweet when fried, adding body to the sauce.
Butter
Carries the curry flavour and adds richness when fried and mixed into the roux.
Curry powder
Supplies the spice and aroma that define the dish.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with the butter and curry powder.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, creamier texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Mixing the curry paste into the stew. Flour mixed with butter and curry powder must be blended until smooth before it goes in, or it will form lumps instead of thickening 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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