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Sour Fish

A fish dish cooked in tamarind, turmeric, mustard, and chillies, finished with optional sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Tamarind and turmeric match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 299 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Sour Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Make a paste of turmeric.

  2. Make a paste of mustard.

  3. Mix tamarind with about 3 cups of water, then strain the mixture and discard the solids.

  4. Mix half the turmeric paste and half the salt with the fish.

Fry and simmer

  1. Fry the fish in oil.

  2. Heat more oil in another pan and add the broken chillies to the hot oil.

  3. Pour in the tamarind water.

  4. Add the remaining turmeric paste, mustard paste, and salt.

  5. Once the mixture is boiling, add the fish.

  6. If desired, add sugar just 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. Tamarind + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together299 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Turmeric + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Tamarind + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together149 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Tamarind + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together362 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Mustard + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Tamarind
Provides the sour flavour that defines the dish.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent aroma and a background bite.
Turmeric
Gives the dish its yellow colour and earthy flavour.
Oil
Carries flavour and browns the fish during frying.
Chillies
Adds heat and pungency to the hot oil and sauce.

The step that matters

Fry the fish in oil before adding it to the sauce. Frying firms the surface of the fish so it holds its shape while simmering in the tamarind liquid. Adding raw fish to a boiling sauce can break it apart and make it mushy.

Swap the turmeric

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, tamarind, mustard, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Turmericthe original
  3. Gingerfits about as well
  4. Cuminfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, tamarind, mustard, sugar. 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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