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Curry of Baked Fish

A curry sauce made with lard, onion, curry powder, and hot water, served over flaked baked fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 32,460 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Curry of Baked Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curry sauce

  1. Heat lard in a frying pan.

  2. Add minced onion and fry until brown.

  3. Stir in hot water or broth, salt, and curry powder.

  4. If desired, strain the sauce and add wet flour to reduce pungency.

Finish with fish

  1. Add flaked fish and let it absorb the curry on low heat for 15 minutes.

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 + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Onion + fishtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,924 recipes

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

  3. Flour + fishtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Lard
Fat that carries flavour and gives the onion a rich base for frying.
Onion
Frying until brown builds sweetness and savoury depth in the sauce.
Curry powder
Provides the spice aroma and flavour that define the dish.
Wet flour
Thickens the sauce and softens the sharp edge of the curry.
Baked fish
Absorbs the curry sauce as it sits on low heat, carrying its flavour.

The step that matters

Frying the onion until brown. Browning the onion in lard develops sweet, savoury flavours that a pale, soft onion cannot give. Stopping too early leaves the sauce tasting raw and flat.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, fish. 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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