Why it works: Chicken and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,902 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓
Selim’s Curries
Ingredients
Directions
Melt the butter in a stewpan over medium heat.
Add the meat and stir well with a wooden spoon.
Mix in the curry paste thoroughly and stir over medium heat for 5 to 10 minutes until cooked.
For a gravy curry, add 2 to 3 tablespoons of boiling water after mixing in the paste and stir for an additional 10 to 12 minutes.
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.
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Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together13,902 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Meat (in the method)
- Provides the protein that cooks through and becomes tender in the spiced fat.
- Butter
- Carries the curry paste and adds richness and a rounded flavor to the sauce.
- Curry paste
- Supplies the spices and aromatics that give the curry its main flavor.
The step that matters
Stirring the curry paste into the butter. Spices bloom and lose their raw, dusty taste when fried in fat; stirring the paste thoroughly into the butter keeps it from scorching in spots while it cooks.
“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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