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Another Receipt for a Curry

A chicken curry served over boiled rice with onions, curry powder, cream, butter, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Another Receipt for a Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the rice

  1. Boil 2 quarts of water in a pot.

  2. Add ½ pound of washed rice to the boiling water and cook for 12 minutes if using Indian rice, or 14 minutes for other types. One minute before finishing, add 1 tablespoon of coarse sea salt.

  3. Drain the rice through a colander and let it sit to remove excess water.

  4. Place a napkin in a pan and gently transfer the rice onto it. Fold the corner of the napkin over the rice to absorb moisture, then transfer to a serving dish.

Make the curry

  1. In a skillet, fry the cut-up chicken until nicely browned.

  2. In the same skillet, fry the sliced onions until golden.

  3. Combine the fried chicken and onions in a stew pan with 1 tablespoon of curry powder.

  4. Cover the stew with water or veal gravy and add 1 clove of garlic.

  5. Let the stew simmer on low heat for 1 hour or until very tender.

Finish and serve

  1. In a bowl, mix 2 or 3 tablespoons of cream with 1 teaspoon of flour, 2 ounces of butter, juice of 1 lemon, and salt to taste.

  2. Add the cream mixture to the stew and bring to a gentle boil, then remove from heat.

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. Rice + chickentop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,769 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

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

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

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

  5. Rice + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Browning and then slow simmering makes the meat tender and flavourful in the sauce.
Onions
Frying until golden builds sweetness and body into the curry base.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, mellow texture to the finished sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and giving the sauce a glossy finish.
Flour
Thickens the cream mixture so the sauce becomes lightly body-rich rather than watery.
Rice
Cooked in boiling water and drained, it forms the starchy base served with the curry.

The step that matters

Adding the cream mixture to the stew. Cream and lemon juice are acidic and dairy-rich, so bringing the stew to a gentle boil rather than a hard boil helps prevent the cream from curdling and keeps the sauce smooth.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Cuminfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, chicken, onion, veal, garlic, 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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