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Chicken and Red Lentil Curry

Lovely thick and filling curry that's a breeze to make. Also easily doubled and freezes well.

By bbcgoodfood · From Open Recipes · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and lentils work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and 202 recipes mention both. Both carry 1-hexanol, which smells resin, flower. The science ↓

The recipe

Serves 4

Ingredients

Contains: milk (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Step-by-step directions aren't available for this recipe. See the full recipe at the source →

By bbcgoodfood. Recipe from Open Recipes.

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. Chicken + lentilstop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together202 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanol (resin, flower).

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

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Cumin + lentilstop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together308 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Garlic + cumintop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Garlic + chickentop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together10,839 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-ethyl-2,5-dimethylpyrazine (roasted, nutty).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sunflower, garlic, cumin, chicken, lentils):

  1. Tomatobetter flavor fit
  2. Spinachbetter flavor fit
  3. Potatoabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sunflower, garlic, cumin, chicken, lentils. 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).