Why it works: Chicken and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,902 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓
Selim’s Curries.
Ingredients
Directions
Melt the butter in a stewpan over medium heat.
Add the meat and stir with a wooden spoon for 5 to 10 minutes.
Mix in the curry paste until well combined.
For a gravy curry, add 2 to 3 tablespoons of boiling water and stir for an additional 10 to 12 minutes.
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.
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Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together13,902 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Chicken, veal, rabbit, or mutton
- Provides the protein that becomes tender and flavorful as it cooks in the fat and spices.
- Butter
- Carries the curry paste's flavor and adds richness while the meat browns.
- Curry paste
- Supplies the main spice flavor, which blooms when fried in fat.
The step that matters
Stirring the meat in the curry paste. Frying the paste in butter before adding liquid lets the spices bloom and the meat brown, building depth. If the pan is too hot, the paste can scorch and turn bitter, so keep the heat at medium and stir often.
“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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