Skip to main content
Main

Curried Chicken a LA Marie

A cold curried chicken entrée served with curry rice, olives, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Thyme and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,973 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Curried Chicken a LA Marie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the sauce base

  1. Cut the chicken into neat joints, using only the best parts.

  2. Slice the onions finely and place them in a stew pan with butter, thyme, and bay leaf. Cook on the stove until pale golden.

  3. Add curry powder, salt, glaze, and flour. Mix in the milk and add the chicken joints.

  4. Bring to a boil, then simmer for about 1 hour, stirring frequently to prevent burning.

Make the aspic coating

  1. Remove the chicken joints and let them cool. Add lemon juice, cream, and dissolved gelatin to the pan contents.

  2. Reboil and strain through a fine sieve, stirring on ice until it begins to set.

  3. Mask the cooled chicken pieces with the mixture and place them on a baking tin over crushed ice.

Garnish and serve

  1. Cover with a little cool aspic jelly and garnish with chopped aspic jelly.

  2. Form a border around the chicken with boiled cold curry rice and farced olives, sprinkling with lobster coral and parsley.

  3. Serve as a cold entrée or for a ball supper.

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. Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  5. Chicken + oniontop 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

Chicken
Provides the main body of the dish, carried in a curry-flavoured sauce.
Butter
Carries the onion flavour and browns the onions gently, adding richness.
Flour
Thickens the curry sauce so it coats the chicken joints.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, softening and mellowing the curry flavour.
Gelatin
Sets the strained sauce into a firm aspic coating for the chicken.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the set coating.

The step that matters

Stirring the sauce on ice until it begins to set. Gelatin sets as it cools, so the sauce must be stirred while chilling to stay smooth and evenly coat the chicken. If it sets unstirred, it becomes lumpy and uneven.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Figfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, onion, butter, thyme, flour, milk, 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.

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesLobster SauceLobster Sauce174 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipes