Skip to main content
Main

Jersey Milk Curry

A fish curry made with milk, curry powder, and mixed spice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Shallot and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,523 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Jersey Milk Curry

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the fish

  1. Cut the fish into neat slices and dredge with flour.

  2. Fry the fish slices in butter with minced shallots until golden.

  3. Sprinkle curry powder over the fish.

  4. Keep warm in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt butter in a saucepan.

  2. Mix in flour until smooth.

  3. Add salt, mixed spice, and enough milk to achieve a thick cream consistency.

  4. Let the sauce boil gently for a few minutes.

  5. Add the fish slices.

  6. Simmer for 30 minutes.

  7. Squeeze lemon juice over the dish before serving.

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. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Flour + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

White boiled fish
Forms the main body of the dish, holding its shape in the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a smooth, cohesive sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the shallots and curry flavour during frying.
Shallots
Adds a mild, sweet savoury base as they soften and brown in butter.
Curry powder
Provides the main spiced aroma and colour of the dish.
Milk
Creates the creamy liquid that the flour thickens into the sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce after adding milk. Flour thickens only when the liquid simmers and starch swells. Adding milk too fast or without stirring can leave lumps, and boiling too hard can scorch the milk on the pan base, so keep it at a gentle simmer while stirring.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, flour, butter, shallot, milk):

  1. Coconutfits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Vanillafits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, flour, butter, shallot, milk. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesFried FishFried Fish120 recipesFish CroquettesFish Croquettes81 recipesScalloped CodScalloped Cod69 recipes