Name: Lobster Currie
Ingredients: 1 onion; 2 cloves garlic; 24 cloves; 1 tablespoon curry powder; 1 coconut (milk and grated); ⅓ cup water; coarse sea salt to taste; juice of 1 lemon; plain boiled rice for serving

Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Lobster Currie

Ingredients

Directions

Cut the onion into thin rings and chop the garlic.
Fry the onion, garlic, and cloves until brown.
Add the curry powder and fry again.
Stir in the coconut milk and grated coconut, then add water and salt.
Stew until the lobster is cooked but not falling apart.
Before serving, add lemon juice and garnish as desired.
Serve with plain boiled rice on the side.

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 + garlictop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together29,058 recipes

Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).
Coconut + ricetop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,063 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,374 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Garlic + lemontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,893 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,433 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, clove, garlic, coconut, milk, rice):

Avocadofits better
Mangofits better
Limefits better
Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, clove, garlic, coconut, milk, rice. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.