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An Indian Beceipt

A stew of roasted fowl with apple, onions, cocoa‑nut, tamarind, curry powder, and rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 20 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 29,058 recipes mention both. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

An Indian Beceipt

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fowl and vegetables

  1. Roast the fowl before a hot fire for 30 minutes, basting with butter. Let it cool.

  2. Sauté the apple, onions, garlic, and lettuce in the remaining butter until tender but not browned.

  3. Cut the white meat from the fowl into 1‑inch pieces.

Make the stew

  1. Break the bones and place them in a stewpan with the trimmings, sautéed vegetables, cocoa‑nut, tamarinds, curry powder, flour, salt, mint, sugar, and water.

  2. Boil for 1.5 hours, then strain through a fine sieve.

  3. Add the stock and fowl pieces to the strained liquid, and simmer gently for 45 minutes.

  4. Stir in the lemon juice and cream, and serve immediately with boiled rice and cut lemons.

Cook the rice

  1. Wash the rice and place it in cold water with salt.

  2. Boil slowly for 25 minutes, stirring frequently.

  3. Drain the rice and fluff with a wooden fork.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Lettuce + tamarindtop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together20 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Clove + tamarindtop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together145 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Apple + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Garlic + tamarindtop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together395 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Fowl
Provides the meat and, with its bones, the body of the stew's flavour.
Butter
Adds richness and carries browning flavour when the fowl is roasted and vegetables are sautéed.
Onions
Sweeten as they cook slowly and add body to the stew base.
Flour
Thickens the strained liquid so it has a fuller body.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced aroma that defines the dish.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, mellow texture at the end.

The step that matters

Strain before adding the meat. Straining the long-boiled liquid through a fine sieve removes bone fragments and solids, leaving a clear, smooth base. Adding the fowl pieces only after straining keeps them tender rather than overcooked.

Flavor stand-ins for the cocoa

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, apple, onion, clove, garlic, lettuce, tamarind):

  1. Chickpeabetter flavor fit
  2. Cashew nutbetter flavor fit
  3. Beansbetter flavor fit
  4. Cocoathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, apple, onion, clove, garlic, lettuce, tamarind. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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