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Currie, or Pepper Water

A chicken curry simmered with curry powder, veal broth, onions, butter, lemon, tamarind, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Currie, or Pepper Water

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Blanch and wash the chicken pieces.

  2. Place the chicken in a small stewpot.

  3. Add curry powder and 1 cup of veal broth.

  4. Simmer until half cooked.

Make the sauce

  1. Fry the sliced onions in butter until nearly done and browned.

  2. Add the fried onions, remaining veal broth, bay leaf, lemon juice, and tamarind juice to the chicken.

  3. Boil until the chicken is nearly done.

  4. Remove the chicken to another stewpan.

  5. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve.

  6. Add the strained mixture back to the chicken.

  7. Stir in flour and enough water to thicken.

  8. Bring to a boil.

  9. Season with cayenne pepper and salt.

  10. Skim off any fat.

Serve

  1. Serve in a bowl.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lemon + tamarindtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together170 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Tamarind + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together207 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Onion + tamarindtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together426 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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 as it simmers in the broth.
Onions
Fried until browned, they add sweetness and savory depth to the sauce.
Flour
Starch that thickens the strained liquid into a smooth, body-rich sauce.
Curry powder
Supplies the spice blend that gives the sauce its dominant aroma and warmth.
Tamarind juice
Adds sourness that balances the richness of the broth and spices.
Butter
Fat used to fry the onions, carrying flavor and promoting browning.

The step that matters

Rub the mixture through a fine sieve. Pressing the cooked solids through a fine sieve breaks them down and removes fibers, giving the sauce a smooth texture before it is thickened and returned to the chicken.

Swap the tamarind

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Tamarindthe original
  4. Coconutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, veal, onion, butter, lemon, flour, pepper. 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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