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Curried Fish

A curry of cooked white fish with apple, onion, butter, fish stock, curry powder, flour, lemon juice, sugar, and rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Curried Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a pan, brown the sliced apple and onion in the butter.

  2. Stir in the flour and curry powder, then gradually add the fish stock.

  3. Skim when boiling and simmer slowly for 30 minutes.

  4. Stir in the lemon juice and sugar.

  5. Strain the mixture and return it to the saucepan.

Finish and serve

  1. Cut the fish into neat pieces and add to the saucepan until heated through.

  2. Serve the curried fish on a dish with a border of cooked 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 + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

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

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

  5. Lemon + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Fat that carries the curry spices and helps the apple and onion brown.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth, lightly bodied sauce.
Curry powder
Provides the main spiced aroma and flavour of the sauce.
Apple
Adds natural sweetness and body to the sauce as it softens.
White fish
Main protein, cooked gently in the sauce until heated through.

The step that matters

Skim when boiling and simmer slowly for 30 minutes. Skimming removes foam and impurities that would cloud the sauce, and a slow simmer lets the apple and onion soften and the flavours blend without scorching the flour-thickened base.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, butter, onion, flour, lemon, 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.

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