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An Indian Keceipt

A chicken stew with apple, onion, garlic, lettuce, cocoa-nut, tamarind, curry powder, flour, and cream, served over boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 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 29,030 recipes mention both. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

An Indian Keceipt

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Roast the fowl

  1. Roast the fowl in a 400°F (200°C) fire for 30 minutes, basting with butter.

  2. Let the fowl cool.

Make the curry

  1. Peel and slice the apple, onions, garlic, and lettuce.

  2. Fry the vegetables in the remaining butter until tender but not browned.

  3. Cut the fowl's white meat into 1-inch pieces.

  4. Break the bones of the fowl.

  5. In a stewpan, combine the bones, vegetables, cocoa-nut, tamarinds, curry powder, flour, salt, mint, sugar, and water.

  6. Boil the mixture for 1.5 hours.

  7. Strain the liquid through a fine sieve.

  8. Add the stock and fowl pieces to the strained liquid.

  9. Simmer gently for 45 minutes.

  10. Stir in the lemon juice and cream.

Cook the rice and serve

  1. Wash the rice.

  2. Boil the rice in 3 pints of cold water with salt for 25 minutes, stirring frequently.

  3. Drain the rice.

  4. Fluff the rice with a wooden fork.

  5. Serve immediately with boiled rice and cut lemons.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together29,030 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Lettuce + tamarindtop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together20 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Apple + cocoatop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together52 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Onion + lettucetop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,562 recipes

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

  5. Butter + appletop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,692 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Fowl
Provides the meat for the curry and, through its bones, flavour for the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour as it fries the vegetables and bastes the fowl.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they fry, forming the base of the curry's body.
Flour
Thickens the curry liquid so it clings to the meat and rice.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced aroma and characteristic flavour of the curry.
Stock
Adds savoury depth and liquid volume to the simmering curry.

The step that matters

Strain the liquid through a fine sieve. Straining removes the bones, vegetables and solids so the sauce turns smooth; leftover fragments would make the curry gritty and cloudy.

Flavor stand-ins for the cocoa

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, apple, onion, garlic, lettuce, tamarind, flour):

  1. Chickpeabetter flavor fit
  2. Peanutbetter flavor fit
  3. Beansbetter flavor fit
  4. Cocoathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, apple, onion, garlic, lettuce, tamarind, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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