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Curry Chicken

A stew of chicken simmered in a spiced sauce with onions, curry powder, flour, and egg yolk, served over rice.

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

Prepare the chicken

  1. Cut up the chicken and wash it well.

  2. Place the chicken in a stewpan and cover with water.

  3. Boil, covered, until tender.

  4. Add salt and cook for a few more minutes.

  5. Remove the chicken and set aside the broth.

Make the curry

  1. Chop the onions.

  2. Fry the onions in butter until brown.

  3. Remove the onions and add the chicken to the pan.

  4. Fry for 3-4 minutes.

  5. Sprinkle curry powder over the chicken.

  6. Pour in the reserved broth and stir well.

  7. Stew for 5 minutes.

  8. Mix flour with a little water.

  9. Stir the mixture into the stew.

  10. Add the beaten egg yolk and mix until combined.

Serve

  1. Serve with hot boiled rice around the chicken curry.

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 as it simmers in water.
Onions
Fried in butter until brown, they add sweetness and a savoury base to the sauce.
Butter
Carries the frying of the onions and adds richness and flavour.
Curry powder
Blooms in the hot pan with the chicken, releasing aroma and flavour into the stew.
Flour
Mixed with water and stirred in, it thickens the broth into a sauce.
Egg yolk
Beaten into the stew, it adds richness and helps enrich the sauce's texture.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour mixture into the stew. Flour mixed with a little water must be stirred in smoothly, otherwise it clumps. Starch swells and thickens the liquid only when it is well dispersed and heated.

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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