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Anothbr Rbobipt for a Curry

A chicken curry served over boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Anothbr Rbobipt for a Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the rice

  1. Boil 2 quarts of water in a pot.

  2. Add ½ pound of washed rice and boil for 12 minutes if using Indian rice, or 14 minutes for other types.

  3. One minute before finishing, add 1 tablespoon of salt.

  4. Drain the rice through a colander and lay it on a napkin in a pan.

  5. Cover the rice with the napkin to draw out moisture, then gently shake it into a serving dish.

Make the curry

  1. In a skillet, fry the cut-up chicken until browned.

  2. In the same skillet, fry the sliced onions until golden.

  3. Combine the fried chicken and onions in a stew pan with 1 tablespoon of curry powder and cover with water or gravy.

  4. Add 1 clove of garlic and let it stew on low heat for 1 hour or until tender.

  5. In a bowl, mix 2-3 tablespoons of cream, 1 teaspoon of flour, 2 ounces of butter, and the juice of 1 lemon.

  6. Add this mixture to the stew and bring to a boil, then remove from heat.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Rice + chickentop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,769 recipes

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

  3. Chicken + garlictop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,850 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-ethyl-2,5-dimethylpyrazine (roasted, nutty).

  4. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  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

Rice
Forms the bulk of the dish; draining and drying it keeps the grains separate and fluffy.
Chicken
Provides the main protein; browning first adds savoury flavour to the stew.
Onions
Frying until golden adds sweetness and depth to the sauce.
Curry powder
Supplies the spice aroma that defines the curry.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded texture to the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a silky mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Adding the cream, flour and lemon mixture. Flour thickens the sauce, but adding dairy and acid to a boiling stew can curdle it. Bringing it just to a boil and then removing from heat helps keep the sauce smooth.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, chicken, onion, garlic, cream, flour, butter. 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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