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Curry of Salmon

A salmon dish simmered in a curry sauce with onion, olive oil, curry powder, tomato ketchup, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Olive and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,539 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Curry of Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Fry the minced onion in olive oil until brown.

  2. Add curry powder and cook for a moment.

  3. Stir in hot water, flour dissolved in cold water, tomato ketchup or chutney, and salt.

  4. Simmer until the sauce thickens.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the canned salmon and warm through 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. Olive + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,539 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Onion + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,779 recipes

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

  4. Olive + salmontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,942 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Onion
Softens and browns in the oil, building a sweet, savory base for the sauce.
Curry powder
Provides the main spice aroma, which blooms when briefly cooked in hot fat.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it simmers, giving it body.
Tomato ketchup or chutney
Adds sweetness and acidity that balance the spices.
Canned salmon
Supplies the main protein and flakes into the sauce as it warms.

The step that matters

Simmer until the sauce thickens. Flour thickens only when it is heated long enough for its starch to swell in the liquid. Stopping early leaves the sauce thin, while overcooking can make it pasty. Cooking the spices briefly before adding liquid helps them bloom.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Cucumberfits better
  2. Eggplantfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, flour, tomato, salmon. 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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