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Fish-puri

Fish Puri is a fried fish dumpling made by stuffing spiced fish into a dough of flour and ghee.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Turmeric and cumin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,698 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Fish-puri

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Boil the fish pieces with salt and turmeric until cooked, then remove the bones.

  2. Add ginger, turmeric, cumin, pepper, coriander, garam masala, salt, and sugar to the fish, and mix thoroughly.

  3. Heat a little ghee in a pan and brown the fish mixture slightly.

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix flour with ghee and enough water to form a moderately soft dough.

Stuff and fry

  1. Divide the dough into small balls, flatten them, and stuff with the spiced fish mixture.

  2. Shape the stuffed balls into thick round discs.

  3. Fry the discs in plenty of hot ghee until golden brown.

  4. Serve hot.

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. Turmeric + cumintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,698 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Cumin + coriandertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,866 recipes

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

  3. Turmeric + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Ginger + coriandertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Turmeric + coriandertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,253 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

Fish
Provides the main filling and protein, becoming flaky and tender when boiled and browned.
Flour
Forms the dough wrapper that encloses the filling and crisps when fried.
Ghee
Adds fat for frying, giving the discs a golden brown crust and rich flavour.

The step that matters

Frying the stuffed discs. The discs need plenty of hot ghee so the dough sets and browns quickly. Oil that is too cool lets the dough soak up fat and turn greasy before the crust forms.

Swap the coriander

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, turmeric, ginger, cumin, pepper, sugar, ghee):

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Corianderthe original
  4. Clovefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, turmeric, ginger, cumin, pepper, sugar, ghee. 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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