Skip to main content
Main

Curried FIsH

A fish dish cooked with onion, butter, curry powder, salt, pepper, served with boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Curried FIsH

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curry

  1. Fry the chopped onion in butter until partially cooked.

  2. Add curry powder and cook for a few moments.

  3. Stir in the cold fish and cook for a few more moments.

  4. Season with salt and pepper.

Serve

  1. Serve on a hot dish with a border of boiled rice.

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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Pepper + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Butter + fishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Onion
Softens in butter and builds the savory base of the curry.
Butter
Carries the curry powder's flavor and adds richness to the onion.
Curry powder
Provides the spiced aroma and flavor that defines the dish.
Cold fish
Is the main protein, gently warmed through in the spiced butter.

The step that matters

Adding the cold fish. Fish is already cooked, so it only needs gentle warming; overcooking it toughens the flakes and makes them dry.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, fish, pepper, 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.

More fish curry recipes

with Saffron Rice 3Maldivian 3 See all 37 →

You might also like

Fried FishFried Fish120 recipesRice FrittersRice Fritters84 recipesFish CroquettesFish Croquettes81 recipesScalloped CodScalloped Cod69 recipes