Why it works: Chicken and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,172 recipes. Both carry 1-butyl acetate, which smells fruity, banana. The science ↓
Curried Chicken
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the chicken and sweetbread
Blanch the chicken and sweetbread, then parboil them.
Cut the white meat of the chicken and sweetbread into smooth, well-shaped slices.
Combine the slices in a pot with veal gravy and heat until done.
Make the curry
Cut the remaining chicken into small joints, keeping the meat on the bone.
Fry the chicken pieces until browned.
In a stew-pan, combine the fried chicken with forcemeat balls, truffles, and morels.
Pour in the beef gravy and simmer until finished.
Add mushroom ketchup or lemon pickle to taste.
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.
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Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,172 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).
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Chicken + beeftop 4% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together2,148 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
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Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together3,232 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
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Mushroom + truffletop 4% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,900 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
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Veal + truffletop 11% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together815 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Chicken
- Provides the main meat; browning and simmering set its texture and flavour.
- Sweetbread
- Adds a tender, delicate texture after blanching and parboiling.
- Veal gravy
- Supplies moisture and a rich, savoury base for the sliced meats.
- Beef gravy
- Adds body and depth to the sauce as it simmers with the chicken.
- Mushroom ketchup
- Adds savoury, tangy depth to the sauce when added to taste.
The step that matters
Frying the chicken pieces until browned. Browning builds flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pieces that are crowded or too wet will steam instead, leaving the dish pale and flat before the gravy is added.
“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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