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Curried Chicken

A stew of whole chicken cooked in pork broth with curry powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,417 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Curried Chicken

Oven, in the book's wordsA good oven

Ingredients

Directions

Stew the chicken

  1. Cover the chicken with cold, weak broth or the prepared pork broth.

  2. Stew slowly until the chicken is tender.

Make the pork broth

  1. If using pork, cook the pork and onion in 3 cups of water until you have 1 pint of liquid, then strain and cool.

Finish and serve

  1. Ten minutes before serving, stir in the curry powder mixed with cold water and simmer gently.

  2. Serve the chicken on a hot 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. Chicken + porktop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,417 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the meat, which becomes tender through slow, gentle stewing in liquid.
Fat salt pork
Adds fat and savory richness to the broth, carrying flavor into the gravy.
Onion
Adds aroma and mild sweetness to the broth as it cooks down.
Curry powder
Supplies the main spice aroma and flavor, and colors the gravy.

The step that matters

Adding the curry powder. Curry powder can taste raw or bitter if boiled hard or cooked too long. Stirring it in about ten minutes before serving and simmering gently lets its aroma bloom and mellow without scorching, and it keeps the gravy smooth.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pork. 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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