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Curried Chicken

A chicken stew flavored with curry powder, onion, garlic, and spices, simmered in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Curried Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the chicken into pieces as for fricassee.

  2. Wash the chicken thoroughly.

Cook

  1. In a pot, heat oil and sauté chopped onion and garlic until golden.

  2. Add the chicken pieces and brown them on all sides.

  3. Sprinkle curry powder, salt, and pepper over the chicken.

  4. Add enough water to cover the chicken and simmer until cooked through.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Chicken + garlictop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,850 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-ethyl-2,5-dimethylpyrazine (roasted, nutty).

  3. Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main protein, which firms and turns opaque as it cooks through.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it sautés, building the flavour base of the sauce.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma that mellows and deepens during gentle frying.
Curry powder
Supplies the spice blend that gives the dish its characteristic aroma and flavour.

The step that matters

Browning the chicken on all sides. Searing the pieces creates browned, savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pieces that are crowded or wet will steam instead of browning, so brown them in batches with space around each piece.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Onionthe original
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Spinachfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, garlic. 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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