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Curried Chicken

A sauce of butter, flour, curry powder, milk, onion juice, and chicken served with hard boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Curried Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a pan.

  2. Add the flour and curry powder and mix well.

  3. Stir in the onion juice and milk.

  4. Cook for five minutes.

Finish the dish

  1. Add the chicken, eggs, and seasonings.

  2. Cook until the chicken is hot.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

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

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Chicken + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Fat that cooks with the flour and carries the curry flavour into the sauce.
Flour
Starch that thickens the milk into a smooth, creamy sauce.
Milk
Liquid that forms the body of the sauce.
Chicken meat
Main protein that is gently heated through in the sauce.
Curry powder
Spice blend that gives the dish its characteristic aroma and flavour.
Hard boiled eggs
Add richness and soft texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Cook the flour and butter before adding the milk. Flour must be cooked briefly in the melted butter so its raw starch taste fades and it thickens smoothly. Adding milk too early can leave lumps, and stirring while the sauce cooks keeps it even.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, milk, chicken, meat, egg, pepper):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, chicken, meat, egg, 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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