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Cod, Curried

A dish of cold boiled cod flakes simmered in a curry‑flavored sauce with shallots, apple, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,081 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cod, Curried

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curry

  1. Fry the cod flakes in butter for a moment, then set aside on a hot plate.

  2. Add butter, sliced shallots, and apple to the saucepan. Cook until browned.

  3. Stir in flour, curry powder, salt, and cayenne pepper.

  4. Add stock and let it boil for a few minutes.

  5. Return the cod to the saucepan to warm up.

Serve

  1. Serve quickly.

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. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Butter + shallottop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Cod
Provides the flaky, fish-based body of the dish, already cooked and warmed through again.
Shallots
Soften and brown in butter, adding mild sweetness and savoury depth to the sauce.
Apple
Softens and browns with the shallots, adding a touch of sweetness that balances the curry.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce that coats the fish.
Curry powder
Provides the main spiced aroma and flavour of the dish.

The step that matters

Add the stock and let it boil. Flour needs to be cooked in the hot fat and liquid for a few minutes to thicken fully and lose its raw taste, so the sauce should be boiled gently rather than just warmed.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, shallot, flour, 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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