Skip to main content
Main

Curried Fish

A curry of fish pieces simmered with coconut, spices, and cucumber, served with boiled rice.

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

Why it works: Turmeric and coriander match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,253 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Curried Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the fish into 1-inch square pieces.

  2. Cut the cucumber into 2-inch lengths, remove the skin, and cut into quarters, removing the seeds.

  3. Cook the cucumber in boiling salted water for 10 minutes, then strain.

Make the curry

  1. Fry the onion in butter without browning.

  2. Add ground rice, cinnamon, coriander, coconut, curry powder, turmeric, and salt.

  3. Stir in the stock and simmer gently for 20 minutes.

  4. Add the cucumber and fish to the curry and simmer for 10 minutes longer.

Serve

  1. Dish up and serve 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 + coriandertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,253 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Turmeric + cinnamontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,197 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Coconut + turmerictop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,027 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  4. Coconut + coriandertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,039 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Coriander + cucumbertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together875 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Onion
Softens in butter to form the sweet, aromatic base of the curry.
Butter
Carries the onion and spices, adding richness and a rounded flavour.
Fish stock
Provides the liquid that the spices and rice thicken into a sauce.
Fresh coconut
Adds moisture, mild sweetness and body to the curry sauce.
Turmeric
Contributes earthy aroma and the yellow colour of the curry.

The step that matters

Fry the onion in butter without browning. Browning makes the onion bitter and darkens the sauce; gentle softening builds a sweet, mild base that the spices can bloom in.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (coconut, fish, turmeric, coriander, cinnamon, butter, cucumber):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against coconut, fish, turmeric, coriander, cinnamon, butter, cucumber. 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.

More fish curry recipes

with Saffron Rice 3Maldivian 3 See all 37 →

You might also like

Fried FishFried Fish120 recipesFish CroquettesFish Croquettes81 recipesScalloped CodScalloped Cod69 recipesBroiled FishBroiled Fish68 recipes