Name: Curries, Potted Meats, &C
Ingredients: 2 to 6 onions; 1 clove garlic (optional); 4 to 5 eschalots (optional); 1 pint gravy; 2 oz cocoa-nut (or 3 oz if very young); 3 to 4 tablespoons curry powder; 1 tablespoon flour; salt to taste; 1 small cup cream

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 ↓

Curries, Potted Meats, &C

Ingredients

Directions

Fry the onions, garlic, and eschalots in a pan until light brown.
Add the gravy and cocoa-nut, and simmer for 30 minutes.
Stir in the curry powder, flour, and salt, and cook for an additional 15 to 20 minutes.
Finally, mix in the cream 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.

Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together29,058 recipes

Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).
Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,368 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).
Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together16,901 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).
Garlic + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,149 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Clove + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,671 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Swap the clove

The recipe marks clove as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, garlic, cocoa, flour, cream):

Turmericfits better
Cuminfits better
Jalapenofits better
Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, garlic, cocoa, flour, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.