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Skate, Curried

A curried skate dish cooked in curry sauce with tomato conserve and flavored vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,469 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Skate, Curried

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the curried skate

  1. Prepare 1 pint of curry sauce and heat it.

  2. Add 1 pound of skate cut into 1-inch squares to the sauce.

  3. Use fish stock made from skate trimmings for the sauce.

  4. Boil for about 20 minutes, ensuring the fish does not fall apart.

  5. Stir in 1 tablespoon of tomato conserve and 1 tablespoon of flavored vinegar.

Serve

  1. Serve on a hot dish.

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. Sauce + tomatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,469 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Fish + tomatotop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together213 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hepten-3-one (metal).

  3. Tomato + vinegartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,063 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Sauce + fishtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,487 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Fish + vinegartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,036 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

Curry sauce
Provides the main spiced flavour and forms the cooking liquid for the fish.
Skate
Its flesh firms as it cooks, giving the dish its main texture and body.
Fish stock
Adds savoury fish flavour to the sauce, deepening the taste beyond the curry alone.
Tomato conserve
Adds sweetness and body to the sauce, softening the sharpness of the curry spices.
Flavored vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances its richness.

The step that matters

Boiling the skate for about 20 minutes. Fish proteins set as they heat, and prolonged vigorous boiling toughens the flesh and breaks the pieces apart. Keeping the sauce at a gentle simmer helps the skate squares stay whole.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, fish, vinegar):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, fish, vinegar. 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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