Skip to main content
Main

An Indian Eeceept

A curry made from young fowl simmered with apple, onion, curry powder, and cocoa-nibs, served with boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 20 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Eeceept

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.

Prepare the fowl and vegetables

  1. Roast the fowl before a fire for 30 minutes, basting with butter.

  2. Let the fowl cool, then peel and slice the apple, onions, garlic, and lettuce.

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

  4. Cut the fowl meat into 1-inch pieces and break the bones.

Make the curry

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

  2. Boil for 1.5 hours, then strain through a fine sieve.

  3. Add the stock and fowl pieces to the strained liquid, and simmer gently for 45 minutes.

  4. Stir in the lemon juice and cream, and serve immediately with boiled rice and cut lemons.

Cook the rice

  1. Wash the rice and put it in cold water with salt, then boil slowly for 25 minutes, stirring frequently.

  2. Drain the rice and stir with a wooden fork to separate the grains.

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 main meat, which becomes tender through long gentle simmering in the curry.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour, and browns the vegetables and fowl when fried.
Onions
Break down during frying and simmering to add sweetness and body to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the curry liquid so it has a fuller, cohesive texture.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced aroma and flavour that define the dish.
Fresh cream
Stirred in at the end to mellow the spice and add a smooth, rich finish.

The step that matters

Boiling the curry base before straining. Boiling extracts flavour from the bones and vegetables; the liquid must be strained well so the sauce is smooth and clear before the meat is added.

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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesRice FrittersRice Fritters84 recipesSteamed RiceSteamed Rice48 recipesApple SoupApple Soup33 recipes