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Fish, Curried

A fish dish simmered in a curry-flavored sauce with milk and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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, Curried

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Flake the cooked fish into large pieces.

Make the sauce

  1. In a stewpan, heat the butter and fry the onion until lightly browned.

  2. Sprinkle in the curry powder and flour, mixing until smooth.

  3. Add the milk and bring to a boil for 5 to 6 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Season with salt and a few drops of lemon juice.

  2. Serve plain or 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Fish + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,432 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Cooked fish
Forms the main body of the dish, providing flaked protein and texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving it a creamy, smooth body.
Butter
Carries the flavour of the onion and spices and adds richness to the sauce.
Curry powder
Provides the main spiced aroma and flavour of the dish.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce when mixed with the fat.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and depth when browned in butter.

The step that matters

Mixing the curry powder and flour until smooth. Spices and flour must be stirred into the melted butter so no lumps form. Cooking them briefly in fat lets the flour absorb the fat evenly, so the milk thickens smoothly when added.

Swap the onion

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

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

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