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Sardines, Curried

A buttery, coconut and curry sauce served with sardines and rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Coconut and rice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,063 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Sardines, Curried

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curry sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a clean stewpan over medium heat.

  2. Add the sliced onion, apple, and desiccated coconut.

  3. Fry for a few minutes, stirring occasionally to prevent burning.

  4. Season with salt and gradually add the curry powder.

  5. Pour in the stock and let it simmer slowly for 15 minutes, ensuring it doesn't burn.

  6. Thicken the sauce with a mixture of flour and butter kneaded together.

  7. Stir in the sugar and vinegar, and cook for another 10 to 15 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Drain the sardines to remove excess oil, then add them to the curry sauce and heat through.

  2. Serve the curry neatly with a border of well-boiled 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. Coconut + ricetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,063 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  3. Butter + coconuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Apple + coconuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together274 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylethanol (rose, floral).

Butter and flour 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

Sardines
Provide the main protein and rich, oily flavour that the curry sauce carries.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it fries, forming the savoury base of the sauce.
Apple
Adds mild sweetness and body that balances the heat of the curry powder.
Flour and butter
Form a roux that thickens the sauce and gives it a smooth, glossy body.
Curry powder
Supplies the spice blend that gives the dish its characteristic aroma and flavour.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and balances the sugar.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce with flour and butter. Flour must be cooked out in fat and whisked into the simmering liquid, or it stays raw-tasting and forms lumps. Kneading it into butter first helps it disperse evenly and thicken smoothly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, apple, coconut, flour, sugar, vinegar, rice):

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, apple, coconut, flour, sugar, vinegar, rice. 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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