Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Chicken Curry
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Remove the skin from the fowl pieces and roll each piece in a mixture of flour and curry powder.
Fry the sliced onions in butter until light brown.
Cook
Add the fowl pieces to the onions and fry until the meat begins to brown.
Transfer everything to a stewpan and pour in enough boiling water to just cover the meat.
Simmer gently for three hours, adding more boiling water if the mixture becomes too thick.
Serve
Serve with rice in a separate dish.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together42,912 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Flour + oniontop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together32,460 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour and butter 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
- Fowl
- Provides the meat that becomes tender during long simmering and absorbs the curry flavour.
- Flour
- Coats the fowl and thickens the sauce as the liquid simmers.
- Curry powder
- Supplies the spice flavour that defines the dish and blooms in the hot butter and fat.
- Onions
- Soften and brown in butter, adding sweetness and body to the sauce.
- Butter
- Carries the curry flavours and helps the onions and meat brown when frying.
The step that matters
Simmering the fowl gently. Long, gentle simmering breaks down connective tissue so the meat turns tender. A hard boil can toughen the meat and make the sauce reduce too fast or stick, so keep the heat low.
Swap the onion
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter):
- Shallotfits better
- Leekfits better
- Arrowrootfits better
- Onionthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against flour, 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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