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How to Curry Fish

A fish stew flavored with curry powder, butter, and flour, served over boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,433 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

How to Curry Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curry

  1. Fry the onions in butter until golden.

  2. Add the fried onions to the fish in a stew pan.

  3. Sprinkle in the curry powder.

  4. Add the butter rolled in flour.

  5. Half-fry the fish as if preparing for stewing.

  6. Let the mixture stew slowly over low heat until cooked through.

Cook the rice

  1. Prepare the rice by boiling it gently until done.

  2. Drain the rice.

  3. Place the rice on the stove or fire until the grains separate.

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.

  1. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

  2. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Fish + ricetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together270 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Fish
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender as it stews.
Onions
Softened and browned in butter, they add sweetness and build the base flavour.
Butter
Carries the frying and adds richness to the sauce.
Curry powder
Supplies the spice aroma that defines the dish.
Flour
Mixed with butter, it thickens the stewing liquid into a smoother sauce.

The step that matters

Let the mixture stew slowly over low heat until cooked through. Gentle heat lets the fish cook through and become tender without breaking apart, while the flour-thickened sauce settles. Strong heat can toughen fish and scorch the sauce at the bottom of the pan.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, butter, flour, rice):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, butter, flour, rice. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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