Name: Curry of Vegetables
Ingredients: green vegetables (cabbages, cauliflowers, green peas, beans, vegetable marrow, spinach, or sorrel); hot butter; curry powder; coarse sea salt; cream, new milk, or good gravy; 1 onion (optional); juice of 1 lemon; rice (for serving)

Why it works: Cabbage and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,001 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Curry of Vegetables

Ingredients

green vegetables (cabbages, cauliflowers, green peas, beans, vegetable marrow, spinach, or sorrel)
hot butter
curry powder
coarse sea salt
cream, new milk, or good gravy
1 onion (optional)
juice of 1 lemon
rice (for serving)

Directions

Cut the vegetables into small shreds.
Fry them in hot butter mixed with curry powder and a little coarse sea salt until lightly browned.
Cover the vegetables with cream, new milk, or good gravy.
Add a sliced onion if desired and let them simmer until cooked.
Just before serving, squeeze the juice of a lemon over the vegetables.
Serve with rice.

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.

Cabbage + oniontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,001 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,433 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Lemon + ricetop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,366 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).
Cabbage + ricetop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together361 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, butter, cream, lemon, rice):

Leekfits better
Asparagusfits better
Spinachfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, butter, cream, lemon, rice. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.