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Curried Fowl or Chicken

A stew of fowl pieces cooked in butter, onions, flour, curry powder, and stock, served over boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Curried Fowl or Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fowl

  1. Prepare the fowl by separating the wings, legs, breast, back, neck, pinions, and feet.

  2. Cut each piece across twice, keeping the skin on.

Make the curry

  1. In a clean stewpan, melt the butter and add the sliced onions; stew until they become a pulp.

  2. Add the pieces of fowl and fry lightly.

  3. Stir in the flour until well mixed, then add the curry powder, pepper, and salt.

  4. Gradually add the stock and simmer until the fowl is cooked through.

  5. Place a colander over a basin and pour the stewpan contents into it.

  6. Return the fowl pieces to the stewpan, strain the sauce over them, and add a little lemon juice.

  7. Warm up the dish and serve with boiled rice.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Lemon + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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 as it simmers in the sauce.
Butter
Carries the curry flavour and softens the onions, giving the sauce richness.
Onions
Break down into a pulp that thickens the sauce and adds sweetness.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce that clings to the fowl.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced flavour that defines the dish.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and cooks the fowl through.

The step that matters

Stirring in the flour and curry powder before the stock. Cooking the flour and spices in the fat for a moment removes raw flour taste and helps them bloom. Adding the stock gradually while stirring prevents lumps and gives a smooth sauce.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, pepper, lemon, rice):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper, lemon, rice. 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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