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Curried Cutlets

Cutlets of pounded cold haddock seasoned with curry powder, onion and garlic, bound with beaten egg and fried in butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Curried Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Pound the haddock flesh in a mortar until smooth.

  2. Mix in the chopped onion, garlic, curry powder, salt, and pepper.

  3. If the mixture is too soft, stir in the beaten egg.

Cook and serve

  1. Form the mixture into cutlets.

  2. Fry the cutlets in butter until golden brown.

  3. Serve with plain boiled rice or as kedgree.

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 + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Garlic + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

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

  4. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cold haddock
Provides the main protein that forms the body of the cutlets.
Egg
Binds the mixture together and firms it when it is too soft.
Butter
Fat for frying that gives the cutlets a golden, browned crust.
Curry powder
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour throughout the fish mixture.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and moisture to the fish mixture.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma and savoury depth to the mixture.

The step that matters

Adjusting the mixture's consistency with the egg. The egg is added only if the mixture is too soft. Too much egg makes the cutlets rubbery, while too little leaves them likely to fall apart, so judge the texture before adding it.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (haddock, onion, garlic, egg, butter, pepper):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against haddock, onion, garlic, egg, butter, pepper. 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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