Name: Fish Curry with Cocoanut Milk
Ingredients: Currystuffs as per recipe No. 26; Fish prepared as in recipe No. 145; ½ fresh coconut, scraped; 1 tablespoon vinegar; 2 teaspoons ground raw rice or wheat flour; a few grains ground coriander; a small piece of turmeric; ½ cup ghee; 1 onion, finely sliced

Why it works: Coriander and turmeric match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,253 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Fish Curry with Cocoanut Milk

Ingredients

Directions

Clean and prepare the fish as in recipe No. 145 and set aside.
Squeeze the thick coconut milk with the vinegar.
Thicken the thin coconut milk with the ground raw rice or wheat flour, ground coriander, and turmeric.
Heat the ghee in a pan and fry the onions until golden.
Add the ground currystuffs and fry until brown.
Stir in the thin coconut milk until it begins to thicken.
Gently add the fried fish and then the thick coconut milk, being careful not to break the fish.

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.

Coriander + turmerictop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,253 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Coconut + turmerictop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,027 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).
Rice + turmerictop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,941 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Coconut + ricetop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,063 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Coconut + coriandertop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,039 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, coconut, vinegar, rice, coriander, turmeric, ghee):

Capsicumfits better
Cucumberfits better
Tomatofits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, coconut, vinegar, rice, coriander, turmeric, ghee. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.