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Fowl Curry

A curry made with fowl, onions, ginger, spices, chickpeas, and ghee.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Fowl Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the fowl into joints.

  2. Add sliced onions, grated green ginger, ground black pepper, coarse sea salt, and ground coriander seed to the fowl.

  3. Wash the kabool chunnah and boil it in a little water until tender, then add it to the fowl.

Cook

  1. Strain the gravy into a saucepan and mix the curry spices well with it.

  2. Heat ghee in a pan and add cloves for baghar.

  3. Fry the fowl in ghee until browned, then pour the gravy over it.

  4. Let it simmer for a short time and serve.

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. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Coriander + chickpeatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together451 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Ginger + coriandertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Chickpea + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together227 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Fowl
Provides the meat that becomes tender during simmering and carries the curry's main flavour.
Sliced onions
Break down into the gravy, adding body and gentle sweetness as they cook.
Kabool chunnah (chickpeas)
Add firm texture and body to the curry and thicken it slightly.
Ghee
Adds fat for frying, helping the fowl brown and carrying the spice aroma.
Green ginger
Adds a sharp, fresh aroma and warmth to the gravy.
Coriander seed
Contributes a citrusy, aromatic flavour when ground into the curry.

The step that matters

Browning the fowl in ghee. Pat the joints as dry as possible and fry in hot ghee until browned. Browning creates savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction, while wet or crowded pieces steam instead and stay pale.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ginger, pepper, coriander, chickpea, ghee, clove):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ginger, pepper, coriander, chickpea, ghee, clove. 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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