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Skate, Curried

A dish of skate fillets cooked with curry, onions, apple, and butter, served over rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,433 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Skate, Curried

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the skate

  1. Boil the skate and liver carefully until cooked, about 20 minutes.

  2. Drain the skate and place it on a dish.

Make the sauce

  1. Slice the onions and apple, then fry them in butter until soft.

  2. Rub the fried mixture through a sieve and mix with curry powder, curry paste, ground rice, and stock.

  3. Boil the sauce, stirring frequently until thick and smooth.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the skate and serve with boiled rice in a tureen.

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

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

  2. Apple + ricetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,311 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Liver + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,420 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Skate
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked gently by boiling until it is flaky and tender.
Onions
Soften in butter and break down into the sauce, adding body and a mild sweetness.
Apple
Softens with the onions and adds mild sweetness and acidity that balance the curry flavour.
Butter
Fat that softens the onions and apple and carries the curry flavours.
Ground rice
Starch that thickens the sauce as it boils, giving it body.

The step that matters

Boil the sauce, stirring frequently until thick and smooth. Ground rice is a starch that thickens when heated. Stirring keeps it from settling and scorching on the bottom of the pan, which would leave lumps or a burnt taste.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Applethe original
  4. Grapefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, onion, butter, 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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