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A Plain Fish Curry

A simple fish curry made with onion, butter, curry powder, water, flour, and cold fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and fish are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,488 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

A Plain Fish Curry

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Fry the onion in butter or oil until brown.

  2. Add curry powder and hot water to the pan.

  3. Dissolve flour in a little cold water, then add to the sauce and strain.

  4. Flake the cold fish and warm it in the sauce.

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. Butter + fishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

Onion
Browning in fat builds a sweet, savoury base for the sauce.
Butter or oil
Fat carries the curry flavour and helps the onion brown evenly.
Curry powder
Releases aromatic compounds into the fat and water, giving the sauce its flavour.
Flour
Starch thickens the liquid into a smoother, more cohesive sauce.
Hot water
Forms the liquid base that the spices and flour thicken.
Cold boiled or baked fish
Provides the main protein, which is gently rewarmed so it stays tender.

The step that matters

Dissolving the flour in cold water before adding it to the sauce. Flour added dry or straight into hot liquid clumps, because its starch swells unevenly on contact with heat. Mixing it into cold water first spreads the starch evenly, so it thickens the sauce smoothly. Straining catches any lumps that still form.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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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