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Fish Curry

A fish curry with butter, onion, curry powder, stock or almond milk, salt, lemon juice, and fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,655 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Fish Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curry base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the sliced onion and fry for a few minutes.

  3. Stir in the curry powder and fry for another minute.

  4. Pour in the stock or almond milk, then add the salt and lemon juice.

  5. Boil the mixture for five minutes.

Cook the fish

  1. Cut the fish into pieces about 1.5 inches square and add to the curry.

  2. Cook the fish in the curry until done, about 15 to 30 minutes depending on the type of 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. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Onion + almondtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,769 recipes

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

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Fish
Provides the main protein, which firms and turns opaque as it cooks in the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying the curry powder's aroma into the sauce.
Curry powder
Supplies the spice flavour that defines the dish, bloomed in fat to release aroma.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it fries, forming the flavour base of the sauce.
Stock or almond milk
Forms the liquid of the sauce, adding moisture and body.

The step that matters

Cook the fish until done. Fish cooks quickly and can overcook into dry, rubbery pieces. Cooking time depends on the species and piece size, so check for flaking rather than relying only on the time range.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, butter, lemon, almond):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, butter, lemon, almond. 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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