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Chicken Curry

A curry made with chicken, onions, curry powder, garlic, broth, butter, cream, flour, salt, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Chicken Curry

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 ↓

Chicken Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curry

  1. Fry the sliced onions in a pan until golden brown.

  2. Add the chicken joints, curry powder, garlic, and broth to the pan.

  3. Cover and simmer for at least 1 hour until the chicken is tender.

Finish and serve

  1. In a bowl, mix the butter, cream, flour, and salt until smooth.

  2. Stir the mixture into the curry and bring to a boil.

  3. Serve with a squeeze of lemon juice.

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.

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.

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

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender through long, covered simmering in the broth.
Onions
Browning in the pan builds sweetness and depth as the base of the sauce.
Curry powder
Supplies the spice blend that gives the dish its characteristic aroma and flavour.
Butter, cream and flour
Together they enrich the sauce and thicken it, giving it a smoother, rounder body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, spiced sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the butter, cream and flour mixture. Stirring a flour-based mixture into hot liquid can form lumps if it is not first blended smooth. Bringing the sauce to a boil after adding it lets the flour cook and thicken fully, so it does not taste raw or pasty.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, onion, garlic, veal, butter, cream, flour):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, onion, garlic, veal, butter, cream, flour. 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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