Name: Curry Chicken
Ingredients: 1 whole chicken, cut into pieces; ½ cup salt pork, diced; 1 onion, quartered; coarse sea salt, to taste; water, enough to cover chicken; 1 tablespoon curry powder; rice, boiled and formed in cups

Why it works: Chicken and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,417 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Curry Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curry

In a saucepan, combine chicken, salt pork, onion, and sea salt.
Add enough cold water to cover the chicken and simmer until tender.
Mix curry powder with a little water and stir into the gravy.
Let it stew with the chicken for 10 minutes.

Serve

Dish the chicken, remove the onion, and pour the gravy over it.
Arrange the rice around the chicken.

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.

Chicken + porktop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,417 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Chicken + ricetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,769 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).
Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,814 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).
Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,433 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,214 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken: Provides the main protein, which becomes tender as it simmers in the liquid.
Salt pork: Adds fat and savory flavor to the gravy as it renders during simmering.
Curry powder: Supplies the spice and aroma that define the dish's flavor.
Rice: Serves as a starchy base that soaks up the gravy.