Skip to main content
Main

Fish Mooloo

A fish dish cooked in ghee with coconut milk, chilies, onions, garlic, vinegar, ginger, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Fish Mooloo

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Fry the fish in ghee until cooked, then let it cool.

  2. Scrape the coconut and mix with 1 cup hot water, rub well, and strain.

  3. Add 2 more tablespoons of water to the coconut and strain again.

Make the sauce

  1. In a pan, fry the chilies, onions, and garlic in ghee until half cooked.

  2. Add the last straining of coconut water and cook until dry.

Finish

  1. Pour in the first straining of coconut water, vinegar, ginger, pepper, and salt to taste over the fish.

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 + coconuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together458 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Coconut + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,648 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Garlic + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Fish
Is the main protein, fried first so it holds its shape in the final dish.
Coconut milk
Adds richness and body, with fat and sweetness coming through as the sauce reduces.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they fry, building the base flavour of the sauce.
Green chilies
Add heat and sharpness that carry through the cooked sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the coconut and balances the richness.

The step that matters

Cook the coconut until dry. Cooking the last coconut extract until it dries out concentrates its flavour and fat. Stopping too early leaves the sauce thin, while over-reducing can make it oily or scorch.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, ghee, onion, garlic, coconut, milk, vinegar):

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, ghee, onion, garlic, coconut, milk, vinegar. 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.

You might also like

Fried FishFried Fish120 recipesFish CroquettesFish Croquettes81 recipesScalloped CodScalloped Cod69 recipesBroiled FishBroiled Fish68 recipes