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Currie of Chicken

A curry stew of chicken pieces simmered with onions, almonds, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 of Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Blanch and drain the chicken pieces until dry.

  2. In a stewpan, combine chicken, curry powder, and veal broth. Stew gently until half cooked.

Make the onion sauce

  1. In another stewpan, combine onions, curry powder, veal broth, and pounded almonds. Boil until onions are tender.

  2. Rub the onion mixture through a fine sieve into the chicken stew.

  3. Season with Cayenne pepper, salt, and lemon or tamarind juice.

Finish and thicken

  1. Continue to stew the chicken until three-quarters cooked.

  2. Pour the cooking liquid into another stewpan, add butter, and a little flour and water. Reduce to 1½ cups.

  3. Strain the sauce back into the chicken and let simmer until the chicken is tender.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Almond + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Young chickens
Provides the meat that becomes tender during long gentle stewing in the sauce.
Onions
Pureed into the sauce, they add body and sweetness that thicken and flavour the curry.
Jordan almonds
Pounded and blended into the sauce, they add body, richness and a mild nutty flavour.
Curry powder
Supplies the main spice aroma and flavour of the curry.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the reduced sauce, giving it a smoother mouthfeel.
Flour
Helps thicken the reduced cooking liquid into a sauce that clings to the chicken.

The step that matters

Rub the onion mixture through a fine sieve. Pressing the cooked onions and almonds through a sieve turns them into a smooth purée. Skipping or rushing this leaves lumps and coarse texture in the sauce.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, veal, almond, pepper, lemon, butter, 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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