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Country Captain

A fried poultry dish flavored with curry, tomato sauce, and spices, served with croutons and onion rings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Country Captain

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim the cold cooked poultry or game into neat pieces, then dip each piece in flour.

Make the sauce

  1. Fry the pieces in 2 oz. of butter until delicately browned.

  2. Add salt, black pepper, cayenne pepper, and curry powder.

  3. Stir in the sieved pulp of 2-3 tomatoes and ½ pint of tomato sauce.

  4. Add a little finely minced parsley and boil again.

Serve

  1. Dish in a pile and garnish with fried croutons, minced parsley, and fried onion rings.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,398 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cold cooked poultry or game
Forms the main body of the dish and carries the sauce.
Flour
Coats the pieces so they brown and help thicken the sauce.
Butter
Fat for frying that browns the coated pieces and adds richness.
Curry powder
Provides the warm, spiced aroma that defines the dish.
Tomatoes
Add acidity, body and moisture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Frying the coated pieces in butter. Frying until only delicately browned sets the flour coating and builds flavour without drying or scorching the meat. Too much heat burns the flour and turns the butter bitter before the sauce is added.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, pepper, tomato, sauce, parsley):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, pepper, tomato, sauce, parsley. 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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