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Chicken or Rabbit Curry

A curry made with chicken or rabbit, onions, butter, curry powder, flour, cream, and stock or brown gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 or Rabbit Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Brown and simmer

  1. Brown the chicken or rabbit joints in a frying pan with sliced onions and butter.

  2. Transfer to a stew pan, cover with stock or brown gravy, and simmer until tender.

Finish the curry

  1. In a bowl, mix curry powder, flour, butter, and cream until smooth.

  2. Add the mixture to the stew and season with salt.

  3. Arrange the meat in the center of a dish and pour the gravy over it.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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 or rabbit
Provides the meat that becomes tender during slow simmering in the stew.
Butter
Carries fat for browning the meat and onions, adding richness to the sauce.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced aroma and flavour that defines the curry.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the meat rather than running thin.
Cream
Adds smoothness and richness, softening the sharpness of the spices.

The step that matters

Mixing the curry paste smooth before adding it. Curry powder and flour mixed with butter and cream must be fully smooth; lumps of flour or spice won't dissolve in the stew and can leave the sauce gritty and uneven in thickness.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Onionthe original
  4. Chivefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, flour, 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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