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Curried Fish

Curried Fish is a fish fillet dish cooked in curry sauce and served with molded rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,366 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Curried Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the curry sauce according to a separate recipe.

  2. Cut each fish fillet into two pieces.

  3. Butter a saucepan and lay the fish pieces inside.

  4. Boil the rice and dry it thoroughly.

  5. Press the rice into small cups or molds.

Cook

  1. Pour the curry sauce over the fish and bring to a boil.

  2. Reduce heat and cook very slowly for one hour.

  3. Season with salt and lemon juice just before serving.

Serve

  1. Carefully dish the fish and pour the sauce over it.

  2. Garnish with the molded 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. Lemon + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  2. Sauce + ricetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,396 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sauce + lemontop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Bream
Forms the main body of the dish, firm flesh that holds together during slow cooking.
Curry sauce
Provides the liquid, flavour and moisture that cook into the fish during the long simmer.
Rice
Starch that is boiled, dried and pressed into molds as a neutral, structured garnish.

The step that matters

Reduce heat and cook very slowly for one hour. Bringing the sauce to a boil and then holding it at a gentle simmer keeps the fish tender and moist. A hard boil for the full hour would toughen the flesh and break it apart.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, 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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