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A fish stew flavored with curry powder, milk, and stock, served over boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and brown

  1. Flake the fish.

  2. Fry the fish with butter and onions until nicely browned.

  3. Transfer the fish mixture to a stewpan.

Make the curry

  1. Add the stock and butter-flour thickening.

  2. Simmer for 10 minutes.

  3. Stir the curry powder into the milk.

  4. Add the milk and seasoning to the stewpan.

  5. Bring the stew to a boil.

Serve

  1. Serve with boiled rice.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Onion + milktop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Onion
Softens and browns during frying, adding sweetness and savoury depth to the base.
Butter
Carries flavour and browns the fish and onions, and with flour thickens the stew.
Curry powder
Supplies the dish's main spiced aroma when stirred into the milk.
Milk
Adds creaminess and a mild, smooth body to the sauce.
White stock
Provides the main liquid that becomes the body of the stew.

The step that matters

Add the butter-flour thickening to the stock smoothly. Flour thickens only when its starch is evenly dispersed and heated. Mixing it in fully before simmering prevents lumps and gives a smooth, consistently thick sauce.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, milk, 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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