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Fish — Continued

A fish curry made with butter, white stock, curry powder, and served with rice and croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Fish — Continued

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curry

  1. Fry the fish in ½ cup of butter until lightly browned.

  2. Pour white stock over the fish, adding ½ cup of butter and curry powder.

  3. Season with salt, lemon juice, sugar, and cayenne.

  4. Boil the stock for 15-20 minutes, then strain it into a clean stewpan.

  5. Skim the stock and add the fish, boiling gently without breaking it.

Serve

  1. Wash and boil ½ lb of rice in water until cooked and dry.

  2. Serve the curry on a hot dish, garnished with croutons, alongside the 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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Fish + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

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

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

  5. Rice + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Fish
Forms the main body of the dish; gently cooked so it stays in pieces.
Butter
Fat that browns the fish and carries the curry powder's flavour through the sauce.
White stock
Liquid base of the sauce, which the fish is simmered in.
Curry powder
Provides the spiced, aromatic flavour that defines the dish.
Rice
Starchy side that soaks up the sauce and balances the spice.

The step that matters

Boiling the fish gently. Vigorous boiling agitates delicate fish flesh and causes it to break apart and toughen. Keeping the stock at a gentle simmer lets the fish cook through while holding its shape.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, butter, sugar, rice, bread):

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Peachfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, butter, sugar, rice, bread. 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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