Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓
Curried Fowl
Ingredients
Directions
Make the curry base
Cut up the cold fowl.
Stew the bones in 1 pint of water for ½ hour.
Slice the onion.
Fry the sliced onion in the butter with the curry powder until pale brown.
Add the fowl.
Add the strained gravy from the bones.
Stir in the baked flour.
Simmer for 20 minutes, stirring frequently.
Stir in the cream and lemon juice.
Cook the rice and serve
Wash the rice.
Boil the rice in 1 quart of cold water for 30 minutes.
Drain the rice.
Fluff the rice with a wooden fork.
Serve immediately with rice.
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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Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together10,433 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
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Lemon + ricetop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,366 recipes
Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together42,912 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Cold fowl
- Provides the chicken meat that makes up the body of the curry.
- Onion
- Softens and sweetens as it fries, forming the flavour base of the sauce.
- Butter
- Carries the curry powder's flavour and adds richness to the fried onion.
- Curry powder
- Supplies the spice flavour, bloomed in fat with the onion.
- Baked flour
- Thickens the gravy so it coats the chicken and rice.
- Thick cream
- Adds richness and softens the sharpness of the sauce.
The step that matters
Stirring in the cream and lemon juice. Cream can curdle when it meets acid and high heat. Adding the cream and lemon juice at the end, off the boil or on very low heat, keeps the sauce smooth.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, butter, flour, cream, rice):
- Coconutfits better
- Avocadofits better
- Raisinfits better
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, flour, cream, 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.
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