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Chicken Curry

A chicken curry with a buttery sauce of onion, flour, sugar, curry powder, tomatoes or apple, and milk or cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Chicken Curry

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Chicken Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the chicken

  1. Season the chicken with salt and pepper, then dredge in flour.

  2. In a large skillet, brown the chicken in hot butter.

Make the sauce

  1. In the same skillet, fry the onion in the remaining butter until colored but not browned.

  2. Add 1 tablespoon of flour, sugar, and curry powder to the skillet and brown them.

  3. Slowly add water or stock and strained tomatoes (or chopped apple), seasoning with salt and pepper.

Simmer and finish

  1. Pour the sauce over the chicken and simmer for one hour or until tender.

  2. Stir in hot milk or cream and boil for one minute longer before serving.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  4. Chicken + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,031 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

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; dredging in flour helps the surface brown and thickens the sauce slightly.
Butter
Carries the browning of the chicken and onion and adds richness to the sauce.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it cooks, forming the body of the sauce.
All-purpose flour
Toasted with the curry powder, it thickens the sauce and gives it body.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced aroma that defines the dish when browned briefly in fat.
Strained tomatoes
Add acidity and body to the sauce, balancing the richness of the milk or cream.

The step that matters

Adding the liquid to the flour and curry mixture. Flour thickens only when it is hydrated gradually; adding the stock slowly while stirring prevents lumps. Browning the curry powder with the flour first develops its aroma.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, pepper, flour, butter, sugar, tomato, milk):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, flour, butter, sugar, tomato, milk. 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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