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Pa Ling Sousi Haeng

A Laotian catfish dish cooked with coconut milk, red chilies, shallots, and fish sauce, served with lime leaves and coriander.

From the Recipes Wiki (Fandom) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Coconut and coriander match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 1,038 recipes mention both. Both carry 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine, which smells cocoa, roasted. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk, soy, fish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Also mentioned in the method: cream

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Scrape off the mucus from the skin of the fish.

  2. Cut the fish into slices about 1 cm thick.

  3. Wash and salt the slices.

  4. Fry the slices in pork fat until they are a good golden colour.

  5. Set the fried slices aside on a plate.

Make the sauce

  1. Put the first extraction of coconut milk in a wok over fire.

  2. Leave it until the cream separates.

  3. Add the kheuang hom.

  4. Leave simmering over a hot fire, stirring occasionally, until the ingredients give off a good aroma.

  5. Add the pig's-bone broth or other clear soup.

  6. Leave the wok over a low fire until the liquid has reduced somewhat.

  7. Add the fish sauce and a considerable quantity of the second extraction of coconut milk.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the fish slices back and forth so that they absorb the liquid.

  2. Add the Kaffir lime leaves and the chopped spring onion leaves.

  3. Transfer the contents of the pan to a platter.

  4. Garnish with ground black pepper and chopped coriander leaves.

  5. Serve.

  6. Ensure the dish has minimal liquid, just enough to keep fish moist, so that liquid covers the bottom of the platter and flows when tipped.

Recipe from the Recipes Wiki (Fandom).

This recipe comes from the Recipes Wiki on Fandom and is licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Our formatting and summaries are shared under the same licence.

Steps grouped into stages for easier reading; the method is the source's own.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Coconut + coriandertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  2. Pepper + coriandertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together5,948 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Coconut + milktop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,642 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Catfish + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together175 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  5. Shallot + meattop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together469 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Pa ling fish
Provides the main body of the dish; its slices are fried, then absorb the sauce.
Coconut milk
Forms the rich, creamy base of the sauce and adds body and fat.
Dried red chilli peppers
Add heat and aroma to the sauce once simmered with the coconut cream.
Shallots
Add sweetness and aromatic depth as they soften in the simmering sauce.
Pig's-bone broth
Adds savoury depth and moisture, reducing to a flavourful liquid.

The step that matters

Frying the fish slices until golden. Browning the surface creates flavour through the Maillard reaction and helps the slices hold their shape, so they can absorb the sauce without falling apart.

Flavor stand-ins for the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (catfish, pepper, coconut, meat, milk, onion, coriander):

  1. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  2. Potatobetter flavor fit
  3. Tomatobetter flavor fit
  4. Shallotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against catfish, pepper, coconut, meat, milk, onion, coriander. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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