Name: Curries
Ingredients: 1½ pounds best end of fore loin (or any meat, fish, game, or poultry); 1 ounce butter; curry powder to taste; coarse sea salt to taste; 2 onions

Why it works: Butter and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 42,912 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Curries

Ingredients

1½ pounds best end of fore loin (or any meat, fish, game, or poultry)
1 ounce butter
curry powder to taste
coarse sea salt to taste
2 onions

Directions

Cut the meat into small chops.
Melt the butter in a stewpan.
Add the chops to the stewpan.
Sprinkle curry powder and coarse sea salt over the chops.
Slice and add the onions to the stewpan.

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.

Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together42,912 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,594 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Meat + oniontop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6,364 recipes

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