Name: Curried Tomatoes
Ingredients: ½ teaspoon grated onion; 2 tablespoons butter; 1 teaspoon curry powder; 4 large tomatoes, cut into thick slices; Coarse sea salt, to taste

Why it works: Onion and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,633 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Curried Tomatoes

Ingredients

½ teaspoon grated onion
2 tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon curry powder
4 large tomatoes, cut into thick slices
Coarse sea salt, to taste

Directions

Make the sauce

Cook the grated onion in butter over medium heat for 2 minutes.
Stir in the curry powder.
Add the tomato slices and sauté until heated through.

Serve

Sprinkle with salt and serve.
Pair with cold meat or fish, and serve with plain boiled 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.

Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,633 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together42,912 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Butter + tomatotop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,918 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Grated onion: Softens as it cooks, adding a mild sweetness and savoury base to the sauce.
Butter: Fat that carries the curry flavour and helps the onion soften without browning quickly.
Curry powder: Provides the main aroma and spiced flavour of the dish.
Tomatoes: Add moisture and acidity, breaking down into the sauce as they heat.