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East India Curry

A chicken curry made with onions, clarified butter, curry powder, stock, and served with Patna rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and chicken match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,148 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

East India Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curry

  1. Heat the clarified butter in a stewing pan and fry the sliced onions until brown.

  2. Add the curry powder.

  3. Mix in the consomme or light beef stock.

  4. Add the chicken pieces.

  5. Stew until cooked through, seasoning with salt.

Prepare the rice and serve

  1. Wash the Patna rice.

  2. Boil the Patna rice until done.

  3. Dry the rice by the fire.

  4. Serve the curry on a dish with the sauce poured over it, alongside the rice.

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. Beef + chickentop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,148 recipes

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

  2. Chicken + ricetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,769 recipes

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

  3. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  4. Onion + chickentop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

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

  5. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Frying until brown builds sweet, savoury flavour and colour as the base of the sauce.
Clarified butter
Fat that fries the onions and carries the curry powder's aroma through the dish.
Curry powder
Supplies the spice blend that gives the sauce its characteristic aroma and flavour.
Consomme or light beef stock
Liquid that forms the sauce and carries flavour into the chicken as it stews.
Raw chickens
Main protein, which becomes tender and flavoured as it stews in the sauce.

The step that matters

Stew until cooked through. Chicken must reach a safe internal temperature all the way through, and stewing gently keeps the meat tender rather than dry or tough.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits about as well
  2. Onionthe original
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Asparagusfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, beef, chicken, rice. 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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