Name: Fowl Curry
Ingredients: fowl, cut into joints; sliced onions; green ginger; black pepper; coarse sea salt; coriander seeds; kabool chennah (chickpeas); ghee; cloves

Why it works: Ginger and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Fowl Curry

Ingredients

Directions

In a bowl, combine the fowl joints with sliced onions, green ginger, black pepper, coarse sea salt, and ground coriander seeds.
Wash the kabool chennah and boil it in a little water until tender.
Add the tender kabool chennah to the fowl mixture.
Drain the gravy into a saucepan and mix the curry spices well with it.
Heat ghee in a pan and add cloves to give flavor.
In a stewpan, heat some ghee and brown the fowl well.
Pour the gravy over the fowl and let it simmer for a short time before serving.

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 + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,038 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together451 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).
Ginger + coriandertop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,505 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17,451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Chickpea + clovetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together227 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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 (ginger, pepper, coriander, chickpea, ghee, clove):

Capsicumfits better
Carrotfits better
Spinachfits better
Onionthe original

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