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Indian Receipt for Curried Fish

A fish dish simmered in a buttery, garlicky, onion base with Bengal curry powder and finished with lemon juice or chili vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Garlic and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Indian Receipt for Curried Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the fish

  1. Place the fish in a stewpan and add enough hot water to barely cover it.

  2. Sprinkle with salt and boil gently until half cooked.

  3. Remove the fish with a slotted spoon and set aside.

  4. Pour the cooking liquid into a basin and skim off any scum.

Make the curry

  1. In the same stewpan, melt the butter until slightly browned.

  2. Add the garlic and onion, frying until well colored.

  3. Add the fish to the pan, sprinkle with curry powder, and stir well.

  4. Cover and shake the pan often until the fish is nicely browned.

  5. Gradually add the reserved cooking liquid and simmer until the fish is fully cooked but not falling apart.

  6. Stir in lemon juice or chili vinegar to taste and 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. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Garlic + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,893 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Fish
Forms the body of the dish and is cooked through gently so it stays in pieces.
Butter
Carries the curry flavour and, browned, adds a nutty richness.
Onion
Fried until well colored, it adds sweetness and body to the sauce.
Garlic
Frying releases its aroma, adding savoury depth to the base.
Bengal curry powder
Blooms in the fat and coats the fish, supplying the main spice flavour.

The step that matters

Simmer the fish after adding the cooking liquid. Fish is already partly cooked and protein tightens and breaks apart with prolonged or vigorous heat, so a gentle simmer keeps the pieces intact while finishing the cooking.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, butter, garlic, onion, lemon):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, butter, garlic, onion, lemon. 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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