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Cod, Curried

Cod simmered in a buttery curry sauce with onions, apple, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,585 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Cod, Curried

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Fry the cod, onions, apple, thyme, and bay leaf until the onions are browned.

Make the gravy

  1. Add the stock, curry powder, curry paste, and ground rice mixed with a little stock.

  2. Simmer gently for 15 minutes.

  3. Stir in the cream, salt, and pepper.

Serve

  1. Serve the cod with the gravy poured over it on a hot dish, accompanied by 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. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  2. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cod
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked gently in the curry gravy.
Onions
Browning them builds sweetness and depth as the base of the gravy.
Curry powder
Supplies the aromatic spice character that defines the dish.
Ground rice
Mixed with stock, it thickens the gravy so it coats the fish.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, rounder texture to the finished gravy.
Butter
Provides fat for frying the cod and onions, adding flavour and browning.

The step that matters

Browning the onions. Onions cooked until browned develop deeper, sweeter flavour through caramelisation; pale onions leave the gravy thin and flat-tasting.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, onion, thyme, rice, cream, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, thyme, rice, cream, 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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