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Fowl, Curried

A curried fowl stew with vegetables, herbs, and coconut, simmered in stock and finished with rice flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,973 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Fowl, Curried

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Bone and cut up the fowl into square pieces.

  2. Roll the fowl pieces in curry powder.

  3. Slice the vegetables thinly.

Make the curry base

  1. Sauté the onions in a little hot fat.

  2. Fry the fowl briefly.

  3. Add the herbs, vegetables, lemon peel, nuts, and stock made from the fowl bones, and stir to a boil.

  4. Cook slowly for 30 minutes.

Thicken and finish

  1. Mix the rice flour with cold stock.

  2. Add the rice flour mixture along with the curry paste and lemon juice.

  3. Boil for an additional 15 minutes.

  4. Remove the meat.

  5. Sieve the sauce through a fine mesh.

  6. Return the sauce to the pot.

  7. Season with salt to taste.

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. Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Thyme + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,193 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Lemon + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Rice + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,456 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Fowl
Provides the main meat, which is browned briefly and then simmered until tender in the sauce.
Rice flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells when heated in the liquid.
Curry paste
Adds the main spiced flavour and aroma to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the rich curry sauce.

The step that matters

Mixing the rice flour with cold stock before adding it. Starch clumps when it hits hot liquid directly. Mixing it into cold stock first separates the granules, so the sauce thickens smoothly once it boils.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, flour, thyme, lemon, onion, celery, almond):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, flour, thyme, lemon, onion, celery, almond. 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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