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A Madras Currie

A chicken curry made with butter, curry powder, lemon, coconut, onion, garlic, and thickened with butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

A Madras Currie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Skin the chicken and cut it into small joints.

  2. Fry the chicken in butter until light brown.

  3. Transfer the chicken to a saucepan.

Simmer and finish

  1. Add curry powder, lemon juice, grated coconut, salt, fried onion, and garlic.

  2. Simmer slowly for 3 hours.

  3. Thicken with butter and flour just before serving.

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 + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Chicken + garlictop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,850 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-ethyl-2,5-dimethylpyrazine (roasted, nutty).

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

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

  4. Lemon + garlictop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,893 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Coconut + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together458 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender during long, slow simmering.
Curry powder
Supplies the spice blend that gives the dish its characteristic aroma and flavour.
Grated coconut
Adds richness, body and subtle sweetness to the sauce as it simmers.
Butter and flour
Flour with butter forms a roux that thickens the sauce to a richer consistency.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness of the coconut.

The step that matters

Simmering slowly for 3 hours. Gentle, low heat lets the chicken become tender and lets the spices and coconut blend without scorching or drying out. Too vigorous a boil can toughen the meat and make the sauce catch on the pan.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, butter, coconut, onion, clove, garlic, flour):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Mangofits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, coconut, onion, clove, garlic, flour. 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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