Name: Spicy Prawn Jambalaya
Ingredients: right|thumb|300px|Ingredients; For the fish part you will need 250g packet of raw prawns (shrimps). Go for the extra large ones. I know these are expensive - but if you hunt around the freezer section in Tesco you will find something called "Extra large Oz Banana Prawns" - these are £5 for the packet - and are bigger than tiger p; For the meat part - you need 120g of chorizo sausage - which you can get from the deli-counter. Peel the outer skin off the sausage and cut it all up into bite-sized pieces.; And then the rest of the ingredients are:; 1 medium onion - sliced into 5 cm long pieces; 1 large green pepper - chopped to a similar size; 2 sticks of celery - chopped similarly - but on the diagonal; Some pulped chunks of garlic and ginger from your freezer; A chicken stock cube; 2 or 3 mediume tomatoes - finely chopped; Som peri-peri sauce - or creole sauce - or tabasco - whatever you like to give the spicy kick; Some chopped flat-leaf parsely; And 1 mug of washed rice (preferably basmati rice)

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 ↓

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.

Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together29,058 recipes

Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).
Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together16,012 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,518 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,090 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Celery + garlictop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,321 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice: Absorbs the stock and sets the body of the dish as it cooks through.
Chorizo sausage: Releases its oil and smoky flavour into the pan, seasoning the base.
Prawns: Provide the seafood flavour and tender bite added near the end of cooking.
Tomatoes: Add acidity and moisture that brightens the rice and stock.
Onion: Softens and sweetens as the base for the dish's flavour.
Green pepper: Browns at the edges on high heat, adding savoury sweetness and bite.

The step that matters

Keep the lid on and the flame at its lowest while the rice cooks. Steam trapped under the lid cooks the rice evenly. Lifting the lid or running the heat too high lets steam escape and can leave the rice dry, scorched or unevenly cooked.

Swap the banana

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, shrimp, meat, onion, pepper, celery, garlic):

Limefits better
Lemonfits better
Avocadofits better
Bananathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, shrimp, meat, onion, pepper, celery, 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.

Ingredient	Portion assumed	kcal
Pork	100g cooked	242
Salmon	100g cooked	208
Rice	1 cup cooked (158g) white	206
Chicken	100g cooked	165
Banana	1 medium (118g)	105
Shrimp	100g cooked	99
Onion	1 medium (110g)	44
Bell Pepper	1 medium (119g)	31
Tomato	1 medium (123g)	22
Celery	1 stalk (40g)	6
Garlic	1 clove (3g)	4
Ginger	1 tsp grated fresh (2g)	2
Water	not in our table	0
Meat	not in our table	0
Sauce	not in our table	0

Spicy Prawn Jambalaya