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Salmon, Curried

A salmon dish simmered in a curry sauce with apple, onion, and anchovy essence.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Anchovy and fish work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 637 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Salmon, Curried

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curry sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a pan and fry the onion until soft but not browned.

  2. Add the curry powder and flour, and fry slowly for about 20 minutes.

  3. Pour in the fish stock or water, then add the chopped apple, onion, and salt to taste.

  4. Simmer gently for 1 hour, then strain the mixture and return it to the pan.

  5. Stir in the anchovy essence, lemon juice, and additional seasoning if needed.

Finish and serve

  1. Prepare the salmon by removing the skin and bones, and flake it into large pieces.

  2. Add the salmon to the curry sauce, heat thoroughly, and serve with well-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. Anchovy + fishtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together637 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Salmon + anchovytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together535 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Salmon + fishtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,078 recipes

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

  4. Butter + fishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the curry sauce as it cooks with the fat and curry powder.
Butter
Carries the curry powder and softens the onion, giving the sauce richness.
Apple
Adds tart sweetness and body as it breaks down during the long simmer.
Salmon
Provides the main protein and flaky texture of the dish.
Onion
Builds savoury sweetness as it softens in the butter.

The step that matters

Frying the curry powder and flour slowly. Curry powder is fat-soluble, so slow frying in butter releases its aromatic compounds and cooks out the raw flour taste. Rushing this over high heat can scorch the spices and leave the sauce bitter or floury.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, butter, flour, onion, lemon, anchovy, fish. 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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