Name: Crab Curry
Ingredients: onions; curry powder; flesh of 1 crab (broken small); juice of ½ lemon

Why it works: Onion and crab work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 311 recipes. Both carry acetoin, which smells butter, cream. The science ↓

Crab Curry

Ingredients

onions
curry powder
flesh of 1 crab (broken small)
juice of ½ lemon

Directions

Prepare the onions and curry as in the previous recipe.
Add the broken crab flesh to the mixture.
Let it stew over medium heat for about 20 minutes.
Stir in the juice of ½ lemon and serve.

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.

Onion + crabtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together311 recipes

Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).
Crab + lemontop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together387 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Onion + lemontop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,646 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).