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Salt-fish Curry with Brinjals

A curry made with salt fish, brinjals, onions, and curry spices, finished with tamarind juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Tamarind and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 426 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Salt-fish Curry with Brinjals

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the salt fish into pieces and wash well.

  2. Soak the fish in cold water for a few minutes.

Cook the curry

  1. Heat the ghee or oil in a pan until bubbling hot.

  2. Fry the onions until golden.

  3. Add the finely ground currystuffs and cook until browned.

  4. Add the salt fish and some water, then cook for a few minutes.

  5. Add the sliced brinjals (do not peel) and cook until tender.

  6. Pour in some tamarind juice, cover, and let it cook for a while.

Serve

  1. Serve with hard-boiled eggs cut in halves for garnish.

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. Tamarind + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together426 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Fish + gheetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together83 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  3. Fish + oniontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,924 recipes

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

  4. Ghee + tamarindtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106 recipes

    Shared aroma: maltol (caramel, sweet).

  5. Fish + tamarindtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Salt fish
Provides the main savoury, salty flavour and the body of the curry.
Onion
Softens and browns into a sweet base that supports the curry's flavour.
Brinjals
Soften during cooking and absorb the curry's sauce, adding body and texture.
Currystuffs
Supply the spice aroma and flavour that define the curry.
Tamarind juice
Adds sourness that balances the richness of the fat and spices.

The step that matters

Browning the currystuffs. Frying the ground spices in hot fat until browned releases their aromatic oils and removes the raw taste. Cooking them too briefly leaves the curry flat, while burning them makes it bitter.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, ghee, tamarind):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, ghee, tamarind. 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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