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Curry Chicken

A stew of chicken simmered with onions, curry powder, flour, and egg yolk, served with boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,769 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Curry Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chicken

  1. Wash the chicken and place it in a stew pan with enough water to cover it. Boil, covered, until tender.

  2. Add salt and cook for a few more minutes. Remove the chicken and set aside the broth.

Make the curry

  1. In the same stew pan, fry the chopped onions in butter until brown. Remove the onions.

  2. Add the chicken back to the pan and fry for 3-4 minutes. Sprinkle curry powder over the chicken.

  3. Pour the reserved broth over the chicken, stir well, and simmer for 5 minutes.

  4. Mix sifted flour with a little water and stir it into the chicken mixture.

  5. Finally, stir in the beaten egg yolk and remove from heat.

Serve

  1. Serve the chicken curry with hot boiled rice around 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. Chicken + ricetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,769 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender when simmered in water.
Onions
Browning in butter builds sweetness and a savoury base for the sauce.
Butter
Fat that carries the curry powder and helps the onions brown.
Curry powder
Supplies the spice aroma that defines the dish.
Flour
Thickens the broth so the sauce clings to the chicken.
Egg yolk
Enriches the sauce and adds richness and body as it sets gently with heat.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolk. Egg yolk thickens through gentle heat, but if the sauce is boiling when it goes in, the yolk can scramble into specks. Remove the pan from heat first and stir steadily so it blends smoothly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, flour, egg, 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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