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Fowl Curry, Kofta

A curry dish of chicken kofta balls simmered in a spiced sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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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 ↓

Fowl Curry, Kofta

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Remove the fleshy parts from the chicken and grind them with the liver, heart, and cooked gizzard until a pulp forms.

  2. Mix in the suet, salt, black pepper, herbs, bread crumbs, a little stock, and enough beaten egg to form a paste.

  3. Shape the mixture into balls the size of large walnuts.

Fry the kofta

  1. Melt butter in a pan, add onion paste, garlic paste, curry powder, and vinegar, and stir well.

  2. Roll the balls in bread crumbs, then add them to the pan, seasoning with salt, and turn to brown evenly.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Chicken + garlictop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,850 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-ethyl-2,5-dimethylpyrazine (roasted, nutty).

  4. Garlic + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

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

  5. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Forms the bulk of the kofta and gives them their savoury meaty body.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the kofta moist and tender as they cook.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and help bind the mixture so the balls hold their shape.
Onion paste
Builds the sweet, savoury base of the curry sauce as it cooks in butter.
Curry powder
Supplies the spice aroma and flavour that define the dish.
Vinegar
Adds a sharp acidity that brightens and balances the rich, spiced flavours.

The step that matters

Binding the paste with egg. Add the beaten egg gradually, only until the mixture just holds together. Too much liquid makes the balls soft and likely to fall apart when shaped and fried, while too little leaves them crumbly. The egg proteins set on heating and bind the meat and crumbs into a cohesive ball.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, bread, garlic, vinegar, pepper, butter):

  1. Onionthe original
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Potatofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, bread, garlic, vinegar, pepper, butter. 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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