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Sweet and Sour Fish

A fish dish simmered in a sweet and sour gravy with onions, raisins, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sweet and Sour Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gravy

  1. Combine 3 cups water, sliced onion, lemon juice, 2 tablespoons sugar, salt, black pepper, and raisins in a pot.

  2. Brown 1 tablespoon sugar in an iron skillet.

  3. Add the gravy mixture to the skillet and then add the fish.

  4. Thicken the gravy with 1 tablespoon flour dissolved in a little water.

Cook the fish

  1. Cook until the fish is tender.

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Lemon + raisintop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Red snapper
Is the main protein that cooks through in the sweet and sour gravy.
Flour
Thickens the gravy into a glossy sauce that coats the fish.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and soft chew to the gravy.
Lemon juice
Adds the sour note that balances the sugar.
Sugar
Provides sweetness, and the browned portion adds deeper caramel flavor and color.

The step that matters

Brown the sugar. Sugar darkens quickly once it starts to caramelize, and past the amber stage it turns bitter. Stop when it is a deep golden brown, before adding the liquid, so the gravy gets color and flavor without a burnt taste.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (snapper, lemon, sugar, pepper, raisin, flour):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against snapper, lemon, sugar, pepper, raisin, flour. 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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