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Curry, Another Way

A curry served with béchamel sauce, lemon juice, and fried onions.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,814 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Curry, Another Way

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Remove the cooked chicken from the curry sauce.

  2. Add 2 spoonfuls of béchamel sauce and a few drops of lemon juice to the curry sauce.

  3. Pour the sauce over the chicken.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the onions until brown.

  2. Remove the fried onions from the butter and drain them on a sieve.

  3. Place the drained onions around the dish when 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.

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

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

  2. Lemon + chickentop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,092 recipes

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

  3. Sauce + oniontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Lemon + oniontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,646 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sauce + chickentop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sauce and onion barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,474 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

Béchamel sauce
Adds a creamy, mild body that thickens and softens the curry sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds a small amount of acidity that brightens the rich, creamy sauce.
Fried onions
Add browned, savoury flavour and a crisp texture as a garnish.

The step that matters

Frying the onions until brown. Onions brown through the Maillard reaction and caramelisation, which need steady heat and attention. Pale or burnt onions lose the savoury, sweet flavour they should add to the dish.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, chicken, onion):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, chicken, onion. 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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