Name: King Kalakua's Curry for Shrimps and Chicken
Ingredients: 1 coconut; 1 clove garlic; 1 piece root ginger (size of nutmeg); a few shreds of onion (optional for chicken); 2 tablespoons curry powder; 1 quart new milk; butter (for cooking); salt (to taste); cornstarch (to thicken)

Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

King Kalakua's Curry for Shrimps and Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Grate the coconut, garlic, and ginger.
Add onion, curry powder, and milk to the mixture.
Simmer on the stove for about 1 hour until the oil is extracted from the coconut.
Strain the mixture, pressing the coconut dry.
For shrimp, heat the mixture again, adding butter, salt, and cornstarch to achieve a creamy consistency.
Add the shrimp and heat through.
For chicken, omit onion, heat butter, add chicken pieces, and stir until glazed.
Add just enough water to cook the chicken thoroughly and slowly.
Once cooked, mix in the curry mixture and thicken with cornstarch.

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.

Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,686 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,038 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together29,058 recipes

Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).
Ginger + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,324 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Coconut + gingertop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,168 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (coconut, clove, garlic, ginger, nutmeg, chicken, milk):

Sweet potatofits better
Capsicumfits better
Carrotfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against coconut, clove, garlic, ginger, nutmeg, chicken, milk. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.