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Chicken Currie

A stew of chicken pieces simmered with onions, garlic, curry powder, flour, butter, and cream, finished with salt and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Chicken Currie

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the chicken

  1. In a pan, melt butter and fry the chicken pieces and onions until light brown.

Simmer

  1. Add the chicken pieces to a stew pan with veal or mutton gravy and garlic.

  2. Simmer until the chicken is tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Mix curry powder, flour, and butter in a bowl, then add this mixture and cream to the stew 30 minutes before serving.

  2. Season with salt and squeeze in lemon before serving.

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

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  5. Garlic + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,893 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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 gravy.
Butter
Carries the frying of the chicken and onions and adds richness to the sauce.
Onions
Soften and brown while frying, adding sweetness and body to the sauce.
Curry powder
Supplies the spice and aroma that define the curry flavour.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with the butter and curry powder.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, mellower body to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the curry-flour mixture and cream. Flour thickens the sauce only when it is heated through, and cream can split or curdle if boiled hard. Adding them 30 minutes before serving lets the sauce thicken and blend gently.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, onion, butter, garlic, flour, cream, lemon. 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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