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Malay Curry

A chicken curry with almonds, lemon rind, turmeric, cayenne pepper, water, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Malay Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Blanch the almonds and fry them in a little butter until brown, but do not let them burn.

  2. Pound the almonds to a cream with the onion and lemon rind.

Cook the curry

  1. Mix the turmeric and cayenne pepper in the water and add it to the chicken and almond mixture in a stewpan.

  2. Let it simmer for about 20 minutes.

  3. Add the cream and let it nearly boil.

Finish and serve

  1. Before serving, squeeze in the juice of a lemon.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lemon + turmerictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,192 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Turmeric + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Almond + turmerictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together406 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Onion + chickentop 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

Almonds
Pound into a cream that thickens and enriches the sauce, adding body and nutty flavour.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the finished curry.
Chicken
Main protein, cooked by simmering in the spiced sauce until tender.
Onion
Pounded with the almonds to add savoury base flavour and body to the sauce.

The step that matters

Frying the almonds. Almonds darken quickly once they reach brown, and over-browned nuts turn bitter and can taint the whole sauce. Watch them closely and remove them as soon as they are evenly golden.

Swap the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, lemon, chicken, turmeric, pepper, cream):

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Lentilsfits better
  3. Cashew nutfits better
  4. Almondthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, lemon, chicken, turmeric, pepper, cream. 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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