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Fish Mooloo

A fish dish simmered in coconut milk with chilies, ghee, garlic, onion, ginger, vinegar, salt, and peppercorns.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Fish Mooloo

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curry base

  1. Fry the chillies in ghee.

  2. Add garlic and onion.

  3. Fry until half cooked.

  4. Stir in ½ cup coconut milk.

  5. Fry until dry.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the remaining coconut milk, vinegar, ginger, salt, and peppercorns.

  2. Pour the hot mixture over the cold fried or boiled 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. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Coconut + gingertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,168 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Garlic + gingertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,402 recipes

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

  5. Onion + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,595 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

Coconut milk
Provides richness and moisture, forming the body of the curry sauce.
Ghee
Fat that fries the chillies, onion and garlic and carries their aroma through the dish.
Onion
Sweetness and body as it cooks down into the curry base.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich coconut milk.
Dried chillies
Supply heat and colour to the curry.

The step that matters

Fry until dry. Cooking the coconut milk down until the oil separates concentrates the flavours and deepens the base. If it is left too wet, the sauce stays thin and tastes flat.

Swap the coconut

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

  1. Mangofits about as well
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Coconutthe original
  4. Cherryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against ghee, clove, garlic, onion, milk, vinegar, ginger. 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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