Name: A Wet Curry, or Curry with Gravy
Ingredients: 2 chickens, cut into pieces; 6 large onions, cut small; 3 tablespoons curry powder; ½ cup butter; 1 pint beef or veal gravy; juice of 1 lemon

Why it works: Chicken and beef match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,148 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

A Wet Curry, or Curry with Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Fry the chicken and onions

Fry the chicken pieces gently in butter until cooked through.
In a separate pan, fry the onions until browned but not burnt.
Add the curry powder to the chicken while frying.

Stew and finish

Combine the fried onions and chicken in a stewpan.
Pour in the beef or veal gravy and cover the pan.
Stew gently until the meat is tender.
Just before serving, add the lemon juice.

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.

Chicken + beeftop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,148 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,092 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,814 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).
Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together42,912 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,902 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Chickens: Provides the meat that becomes tender during gentle stewing.
Onions: Browning builds savory sweetness and body into the curry base.
Curry powder: Supplies the spiced aroma that defines the dish's flavor.
Butter: Fat for frying that carries the curry flavors and browns the meat.
Beef or veal gravy: Adds liquid and savory depth, and moistens the meat as it stews.

The step that matters

Frying the onions. Onions should be browned, not burnt, because scorching adds bitter flavors that carry into the whole curry and cannot be removed later.

Swap the lemon

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

Coconutfits better
Avocadofits better
Grapefits better
Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, onion, butter, beef. 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.

Chicken Broth257 recipes

Lemon Sauce236 recipes

Roast Beef211 recipes

Beef Loaf175 recipes

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A Wet Curry, or Curry with Gravy