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Malay Curry

A chicken curry with almonds, butter, lemon, shallot, curry powder, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and shallot share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 75 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Malay Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Fry the almonds in butter until slightly browned, then pound them to a smooth paste with lemon rind and shallot.

  2. Fry the chicken pieces in the same butter until slightly browned, then remove them.

  3. In the same butter, mix curry powder and salt, then gradually add chicken broth.

Stew and serve

  1. Return the chicken to the pan, add cream and lemon juice, and let it stew gently for 45 minutes.

  2. Serve hot.

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. Almond + shallottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together75 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Lemon + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Almonds
Ground to a paste, they thicken the sauce and add a nutty body.
Butter
Fat for frying that browns the almonds and chicken and carries the curry flavour.
Chicken
Main protein; browning first adds savoury flavour before the slow stew.
Curry powder
Provides the spiced aroma that defines the dish.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, mellow texture to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, spiced sauce.

The step that matters

Gently stewing the chicken. Stewing at a low, gentle heat lets the chicken become tender and lets the sauce thicken without the cream curdling or the chicken drying out. A rolling boil can split the cream and toughen the meat.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, butter, shallot, chicken, 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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