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Skate, Curried

Curried skate cooked in curry sauce with fish stock, 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

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

  2. Add 1 pound of skate pieces and fish stock made from skate trimmings to the sauce.

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

  4. Stir in a little tomato conserve and 1 tablespoon of flavored vinegar.

  5. 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

Skate
Forms the main body of the dish, firm pieces that hold their shape when simmered.
Curry sauce
Supplies the main flavor and liquid base in which the fish cooks.
Tomato conserve
Adds sweetness and acidity that rounds out the curry sauce.
Flavored vinegar
Adds a sharp acidity that brightens the rich, spiced sauce.

The step that matters

Boil for about 20 minutes without breaking up the fish. Fish proteins set and firm as they heat, but a hard, prolonged boil agitates the pieces and causes them to flake apart. Keeping the liquid at a gentler simmer helps the skate pieces 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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