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Chicken or Rabbit Curry

A curry of chicken or rabbit simmered in butter, onions, curry powder, flour, and cream, finished with stock or brown gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Chicken or Rabbit Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curry

  1. Brown the chicken or rabbit joints in a frying pan with sliced onions and butter.

  2. Once half cooked, transfer them to a stew pan and cover with stock or brown gravy.

  3. Let the mixture simmer until the meat is tender.

  4. In a bowl, mix the curry powder, flour, butter, and cream until smooth.

  5. Add this mixture to the stew and season with salt to taste.

Serve

  1. Arrange the meat in the center of a serving dish and pour the gravy over it.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken or rabbit
Provides the meat that becomes tender during slow simmering.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook, adding savory depth to the gravy.
Curry powder
Supplies the main spice aroma and flavor of the dish.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the meat rather than running thin.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, milder finish to the sauce.

The step that matters

Mixing the curry paste into the stew. Flour mixed with butter and cream should be smooth before it goes into the liquid; lumps stay lumps and the sauce thickens unevenly. Blending it fully first lets the flour hydrate and thicken the gravy evenly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Onionthe original
  4. Chivefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, flour, cream. 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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