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Fish Curry

A fish curry made with flour, cream, onions, apple, egg, curry powder, lemon juice, pepper, and salt, served with rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,433 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Fish Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish and vegetables

  1. Dredge the fish with flour and fry it lightly until brown.

  2. Fry the sliced onion and apple (and 1 shallot if possible).

Make the curry

  1. Place all in a stewpan and dredge with curry powder.

  2. Mix the flour smooth with the cream or milk and add to the stewpan.

  3. Season with lemon juice, pepper, and coarse sea salt to taste.

  4. Stew gently for half an hour.

  5. Add ⅓ cup of new milk (and 2 tablespoons of lemon pickle if available).

Serve

  1. Serve with a border of boiled rice garnished with grated egg yolk and slices of lemon.

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 + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Fish + ricetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together270 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Apple + ricetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,311 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 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

Fish
Flakes into the sauce and forms the main body of the dish.
Onions
Softened and sweetened by frying, they add body and mild sweetness to the sauce.
Apple
Its sweetness and softness balance the heat of the curry powder.
Cream or milk
Thickens with the flour and adds richness and a mellow texture to the sauce.
Curry powder
Supplies the spice aroma that defines the dish.

The step that matters

Frying the fish until brown. Dredging in flour and frying builds browned flavour and a coating that helps the fish hold together, so it is less likely to break into shreds during the long stew.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, flour, cream, onion, lemon, egg, rice):

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, flour, cream, onion, lemon, egg, rice. 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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