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Chicken with Curry

A chicken dish simmered in a creamy curry sauce with banana and paprika, served over rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Chicken with Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curry

  1. Prepare the chicken as for fricassee and cook until tender.

  2. Season the chicken with salt and pepper.

  3. Add powdered curry to taste.

  4. Pour in the milk and cream.

  5. Add 4 tablespoons of butter.

  6. Thicken with 1 tablespoon of flour rubbed with the butter.

  7. Cook until the sauce is thickened.

  8. Just before serving, stir in the mashed banana.

Serve

  1. Finish with paprika.

  2. Serve the chicken with cooked rice.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

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

  5. Milk + bananatop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,470 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter, giving it body.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps the flour blend smoothly into the sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding moisture and mild sweetness.
Cream
Adds fat and a smoother, richer texture to the sauce.
Banana
Adds natural sweetness and a soft, mellow body to the sauce.

The step that matters

Cook until the sauce is thickened. Flour needs sustained simmering to swell and lose its raw starchy taste. Stopping early leaves the sauce thin and floury, while the milk and cream can scorch if left unattended on high heat.

Swap the banana

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Mangofits better
  4. Bananathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, milk, cream, butter, flour, 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.

More chicken curry recipes

with Rice 14Indian 9East Indian 5Whole 5Coconut 4Anglo-Indian 3 See all 164 →

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