Name: Frying Batter
Ingredients: 2 cloves garlic; 1 small onion; 1 inch piece of green ginger; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt (formerly 'bay salt'); 1 cup gram flour (or dhal); ¼ teaspoon turmeric; ghee for frying

Why it works: Ginger and turmeric match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,776 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Frying Batter

Ingredients

Directions

Pound the garlic, onion, green ginger, and salt together.
Mix the pounded ingredients with the gram flour.
Add turmeric and enough water to make a moist batter.
Coat the fish with the batter.
Fry the coated fish in ghee until golden brown.

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.

Ginger + turmerictop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,776 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,038 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together29,058 recipes

Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).
Clove + turmerictop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,876 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Flour + turmerictop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,637 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 (clove, garlic, ginger, flour, turmeric, ghee):

Shallotfits better
Eggplantfits better
Welsh onionfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, garlic, ginger, flour, turmeric, ghee. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.