Skip to main content
Main

Curried Sardines

A sauce of sugar, curry powder, cream, and lemon juice served over sardines with fried apple and onion, garnished with capsicums and boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Rice and capsicum match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,890 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Curried Sardines

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, mix sugar, curry powder, cream, and lemon juice.

  2. Heat the mixture over medium heat until hot.

Assemble and serve

  1. Add sardines and heat thoroughly.

  2. Transfer sardines to a hot dish and top with fried apple and onion.

  3. Pour the sauce over the sardines.

  4. Surround with boiled rice and garnish with capsicums.

  5. Serve hot.

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. Rice + capsicumtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Onion + capsicumtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together23,390 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + capsicumtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cream
Forms a rich, smooth sauce that carries the curry flavour and softens its heat.
Curry powder
Supplies the warm, aromatic spice flavour that defines the sauce.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the lemon and the heat of the curry with sweetness.
Sardines
Provide the oily, savoury fish that the sauce is built around.

The step that matters

Heat the sardines thoroughly. Sardines are delicate and can overcook and toughen or dry out if heated too long, yet they must be heated through for safety and to warm the sauce fully. Keeping the heat moderate and timing the step carefully gives tender fish that is hot all the way through.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, cream, lemon, apple, rice, capsicum):

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream, lemon, apple, rice, capsicum. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesRice FrittersRice Fritters84 recipesSteamed RiceSteamed Rice48 recipesApple SoupApple Soup33 recipes