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Sardines, Curried

A quick sardine dish flavored with butter, mustard, curry powder, and lemon juice, served on toast and garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Sardines, Curried

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. In a bowl, mix 1 tablespoon of butter, mustard, curry powder, and lemon juice to make a paste.

  2. Spread the paste thickly over the drained sardines.

Cook and serve

  1. In a skillet, heat the remaining tablespoon of butter.

  2. Add the sardines and grill for a moment until heated through.

  3. Serve the sardines on toast, garnished with parsley.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Mustard + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Mustard + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Sardines
Provide the main protein and oily, savory body of the dish.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps carry the curry flavor into the paste and pan.
Curry powder
Supplies the warm, aromatic spice flavor that defines the dish.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, oily sardines.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavor that balances the richness of the fish.

The step that matters

Grilling the sardines. Sardines are already cooked and delicate, so they only need brief heat to warm through. Overcooking dries the flesh and can make the paste scorch in the pan, so watch them closely.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, lemon, parsley):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, lemon, parsley. 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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