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Malay Currie

A curry made with almonds, onion, lemon rind, curry powder, water, and chicken.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and chicken are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,814 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Malay Currie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the almond base

  1. Blanch the almonds and fry them in a little butter until brown, but do not burn.

  2. Pound the fried almonds to a cream with the onion and lemon rind.

Make the curry

  1. Mix the curry powder with the water and add it to the almond mixture in a stewpan.

  2. Add the chicken joints and let it simmer gently for nearly an hour.

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

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

  2. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Almond + oniontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,769 recipes

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

  5. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Almonds
Ground into a cream, they add body and richness to the sauce.
Butter
Fat for frying the almonds, helping them brown evenly and add nutty flavor.
Onion
Pounded into the paste, it adds sweetness and a savory aromatic base.
Curry powder
Provides the main spice flavor and aroma of the dish.
Chicken
The main protein, which becomes tender as it simmers gently in the sauce.
Lemon rind
Its aromatic oils add fragrance and a light citrus note.

The step that matters

Frying the almonds. Almonds should be browned but not burnt. Over-browned almonds turn bitter, and that bitterness carries into the whole sauce, so watch them closely and stop as soon as they are golden brown.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Grapefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, butter, onion, chicken. 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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