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Fowl, Curry of

A stew of fowl joints simmered with onions, spices, and corn, finished with browned ghee.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Fowl, Curry of

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the fowl

  1. Place the fowl joints in a stewpan barely covered with cold water.

  2. Add the sliced onions, coriander seeds, green ginger, black pepper, salt, and Kabool chennah.

  3. Cook until the fowl is tender.

Make the curry sauce

  1. Mix the ground cinnamon, cloves, and cardamom with a little cold stock or water.

  2. Add the strained liquor from the fowl.

  3. Stir until it boils.

  4. Simmer gently for 20 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Fry the fowl in hot ghee until nicely browned.

  2. Put the fowl into the stewpan with the curry sauce.

  3. Let it stand for 20 minutes to keep hot.

  4. Serve with plainly boiled rice.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Ginger + coriandertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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 becomes tender through slow simmering in water.
Ghee or butter
Fat that browns the fowl joints, adding colour and rich flavour at the end.
Kabool chennah
Chickpeas that add body and thicken the liquid as they cook down.
Onions
Sweetness and savoury body that build the base of the sauce as they soften.
Green ginger
Adds a sharp, fresh aroma that gives the sauce its characteristic bite.

The step that matters

Frying the fowl until nicely browned. Browning in hot ghee creates colour and roasted flavour through the Maillard reaction. Fowl that is too pale or wet from simmering will taste flat, so the joints should be dry and the fat hot before frying.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ghee, corn, ginger, coriander, pepper, cinnamon, clove):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ghee, corn, ginger, coriander, pepper, cinnamon, clove. 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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