Name: Vindaloo
Ingredients: 4 pounds young, fat pork; good vinegar; curry powder; mustard oil; pounded garlic; salt

Why it works: Mustard and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,053 recipes. Both carry linalool, which smells floral, citrus. The science ↓

Vindaloo

Ingredients

Directions

Cut the pork into square pieces, about 2 inches each.
Rinse the pieces in good vinegar.
Rub each piece well with curry powder.
Steep the pork in vinegar to cover for 24 hours with ½ teaspoon salt.
Heat mustard oil in a copper pan until it smokes.
Mix 4 tablespoons of curry powder into a paste with vinegar and add to the pan.
Add the pork with the vinegar it was steeped in and salt to taste.

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.

Mustard + garlictop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together4,053 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).
Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,067 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Vinegar + garlictop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,115 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
Pork + mustardtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,445 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pork + garlictop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,169 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-ethyl-2,5-dimethylpyrazine (roasted, nutty).