Skip to main content
Main

Curried Tench

A fish curry made with tench, onion, butter, curry powder, wine, water, bay leaf, herbs, and finished with egg yolks, cream, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Curried Tench

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Clean the Tench by removing slime.

  2. Plunge the Tench into boiling water for 2-3 minutes, then remove the Tench.

  3. Scale the Tench.

  4. Gut the Tench.

  5. Chop off the fins.

  6. Cut the Tench into small pieces.

  7. Soak the fish pieces in cold water for 1 hour.

  8. Drain and dry the fish.

Cook the curry

  1. Slice the onion.

  2. Fry the sliced onion in butter in a saucepan.

  3. Add the fish to the pan with the onion.

  4. Toss the fish and onion for a few minutes.

  5. Sprinkle with salt, pepper, and curry powder mixed with a little flour.

  6. Cook for 2 more minutes.

  7. Add white wine, boiling water to cover, bay leaf, parsley, peppercorns, cloves, and more salt if needed.

  8. Cover and boil for about 10 minutes.

  9. Set the dish aside.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Carefully remove the fish with a fork and place on a dish.

  2. Boil the remaining liquid to reduce it.

  3. Thicken the reduced liquid with egg yolks mixed with cream.

  4. Remove from heat.

  5. Add lemon juice.

  6. Pour the sauce over the fish.

  7. 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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Parsley + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  5. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Tench
The fish is the main ingredient, cooked gently in the curry liquid until flaky.
Egg yolks
Thicken the reduced liquid into a smooth, rich sauce as they set with gentle heat.
Curry powder
Provides the spiced, aromatic flavour that defines the dish.
Butter
Fat that softens the onion and carries the curry spices into the dish.
Lemon juice
Adds brightness and acidity that balances the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce with egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when gently heated but can curdle and turn grainy if they boil. Remove the pan from heat before stirring them in, and keep the heat low.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, butter, pepper, white wine, parsley, egg, cream):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, pepper, white wine, parsley, egg, cream. 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 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes