Skip to main content
Main

Curried Chicken, Veal, or Rabbit

A curry dish made with chicken, veal, or rabbit simmered in coconut milk, curry powder, and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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, Veal, or Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Joint the chicken neatly and fry it in the butter until light brown.

Make the sauce

  1. Remove the chicken from the pan and fry the sliced onion.

  2. Add the curry powder, coconut, sugar, salt, milk, and gravy to the pan.

  3. Return the chicken to the pan and simmer for 30 minutes; a rabbit will take 1 hour.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the lemon juice and serve with 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. 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. Coconut + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,648 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Chicken + coconuttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together808 recipes

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

  5. Coconut + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Forms the main protein, which firms as it cooks and holds its shape in the sauce.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced aroma and colour that define the dish.
Coconut
Adds richness and body, softening the sharpness of the spices.
Milk
Makes the sauce creamy and mellows the curry powder's heat.
Butter
Carries the spices and browns the chicken for flavour.
Onion
Sweetens as it softens, forming a savoury base for the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmering the chicken in the sauce. Simmering gently keeps the milk from curdling and lets the chicken cook through while it absorbs the spices. A hard boil can toughen the meat and split the sauce.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, coconut, lemon, sugar, butter, milk):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, coconut, lemon, sugar, butter, milk. 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.

More curried chicken recipes

with Rice 4Salad 3 See all 21 →

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipes