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Cold Fish Currie

A chilled fish curry made with boiled fish, vinegar, spices, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Turmeric and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,776 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Cold Fish Currie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Cut the cold boiled fish into round thick slices.

  2. Fry the fish in butter until golden.

Make the marinade

  1. In a pot, combine vinegar, salt, garlic, turmeric, cloves, nutmeg, ginger, and black pepper.

  2. Boil the mixture until fragrant and pour it hot over the fish.

Rest and serve

  1. Cover the dish tightly and let it sit for 24 hours.

  2. Serve cold 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. Turmeric + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Clove + turmerictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,876 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Turmeric + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together372 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

Vinegar
Provides acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the fish while it sits.
Turmeric
Gives the curry its yellow colour and an earthy, slightly bitter flavour.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma that mellows and deepens during cooking and resting.
Salt
Seasons the fish and draws flavour through the marinade.

The step that matters

Pouring the boiled mixture hot over the fish. Heating the vinegar and spices releases their aromatic compounds, so they infuse the fish more fully. Cover the dish tightly while it rests so the aromas and acid stay in contact with the fish rather than escaping.

Swap the garlic

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, butter, vinegar, clove, turmeric, nutmeg, ginger):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, butter, vinegar, clove, turmeric, nutmeg, ginger. 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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