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Puddah Fish

A pickled fish dish made with salt fish, vinegar, tamarind, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Tamarind and cumin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 184 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Puddah Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Wash the salt fish in weak country vinegar.

Make the pickle

  1. Grind the chillies, cumin seeds, mustard seed, garlic, and whole pepper to a paste in vinegar.

  2. Make a thick pickle with the tamarind and English vinegar, passing it through a sieve to remove stones and fiber.

  3. Mix the ground condiments into the pickle and cover each slice of salt fish thickly with it.

Pickle and store

  1. Layer the fish in a jar, covering each layer with the remaining pickle and sprinkling in the whole peppercorns.

  2. Cork the jar securely and place it in the sun for a few hours daily.

  3. After about four weeks, the puddah fish will be ready for use.

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 + cumintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together184 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Cumin + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,082 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Tamarind + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together149 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Mustard + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Cumin + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together765 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Salt fish
Forms the base of the dish and absorbs the vinegar and spice flavours during pickling.
English vinegar
Acts as the sharp, preserving liquid that gives the pickle its acidity.
Tamarind
Adds sourness and body to the thick pickle.
Cumin seeds
Contributes warm, earthy aroma to the ground condiment paste.
Mustard seed
Adds pungent flavour and aroma to the ground condiment paste.
Dried chillies
Provides heat to the ground paste and the finished pickle.

The step that matters

Passing the tamarind pickle through a sieve. Tamarind contains stones and fibres that would make the pickle gritty and uneven. Straining gives a smooth coating that clings evenly to each slice of fish.

Swap the tamarind

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, vinegar, cumin, mustard, garlic, pepper):

  1. Limefits about as well
  2. Tamarindthe original
  3. Lemonfits less well
  4. Avocadofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, vinegar, cumin, mustard, garlic, pepper. 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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