Skip to main content
Main

Fried Chicken a LA Malabar

Fried chicken seasoned with curry powder, served with fried onion bits and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Chicken and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,814 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Fried Chicken a LA Malabar

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Cut up the chicken and wipe it dry.

  2. Rub the chicken with curry powder and a little salt.

  3. Fry the chicken in butter until it is a nice light brown.

Fry the onions

  1. Slice the onions into thin rings and cut the rings into bits about half an inch long.

  2. Fry the onion bits gently in clarified butter until they are dry and a delicate yellow-brown. Avoid burning the onions as it will spoil the flavor.

  3. Once the onions are dry, mix in a little salt.

Serve

  1. Strew the fried onions over the chicken and serve with lemon on the side.

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

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

  2. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

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

  4. Chicken + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,092 recipes

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

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked by frying in butter until lightly browned.
Curry powder
Adds aromatic spice flavour that clings to the chicken when rubbed on before frying.
Onions
Fried until dry and yellow-brown, they add sweetness, savoury depth and a crisp topping.
Butter
Carries heat for frying the chicken and adds richness and browning.
Clarified butter
Fries the onions gently without burning, giving a rich, nutty flavour and crispness.

The step that matters

Frying the onions gently. Onions contain sugars and moisture; too much heat burns the sugars before the pieces dry out, producing bitter flavour. Gentle heat lets them dry and turn an even golden-brown.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Grapefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, onion. 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.

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipes