Name: A Good Curry Sauce
Ingredients: 1 tablespoon butter; 1 coconut, grated; 1 onion, grated; 1 small piece green ginger, chopped fine; 1 tablespoon curry powder; 1½ pints sweet milk; Salt and pepper to taste; A little sugar

Why it works: Coconut and ginger are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,168 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

A Good Curry Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Grate the coconut and pour the milk over it. Let it stand for 20 minutes.
In a saucepan, melt the butter and mix in the curry powder and flour.
Add the grated onion and chopped ginger to the mixture.
Strain the coconut milk and add it to the saucepan. Cook until smooth and thick, stirring constantly.
Season with salt, pepper, and a little sugar. Use this sauce for any curry dish.

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.

Coconut + gingertop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,168 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Ginger + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,800 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + gingertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,595 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Coconut + milktop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,648 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, coconut, ginger, milk, pepper, sugar):

Capsicumfits better
Sweet potatofits better
Carrotfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, coconut, ginger, milk, pepper, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.