Name: Curried Rice
Ingredients: ½ lb rice; 2 teaspoons curry powder; 1 onion; 2 tablespoons butter; coarse sea salt (to taste)

Why it works: Rice and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,433 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Curried Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the rice

Boil the rice in plenty of salted water until tender.
Strain the rice and dry it on a sieve covered with a cloth.

Make the curry rice

Chop the onion finely.
Melt the butter in a frying pan and fry the onion for 5 minutes.
Sprinkle the curry powder on the rice, toss it in the pan, and stir until heated through.

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.

Rice + oniontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,433 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together42,912 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,645 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).