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How to Make Fish Curry

A stewed fish dish with a gravy of fish bones, onions, garlic, Cornubian sauce, curry powder, and butter, served with rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic 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 ↓

How to Make Fish Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gravy

  1. Prepare a rich fish gravy using fish bones, heads, and some flesh.

  2. Fry onions until golden and add them to the gravy along with garlic.

  3. Stir in Cornubian sauce, curry powder, and butter rolled in flour.

Cook the curry

  1. Half fry the fish as for stewing, then place it in a stewpan.

  2. Pour the gravy over the fish and let it stew slowly.

Cook and serve the rice

  1. Boil the rice gently until done, then drain and place it on the stove or in the oven to separate the grains.

  2. Serve the rice in a separate dish from the curry.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Garlic + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,358 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  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 bones and heads
Build a rich, full-flavoured gravy as they simmer.
Butter rolled in flour
Thickens the gravy and adds richness and body.
Curry powder
Provides the spiced aroma and flavour of the curry.
Fried onions
Add sweetness and depth to the gravy when cooked golden.
Fish suitable for stewing
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender as it stews.

The step that matters

Let the curry stew slowly. Gentle, slow simmering keeps the fish tender and intact while the gravy flavours it. Vigorous boiling can break the fish apart and make the gravy cloudy.

Swap the clove

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, onion, garlic, sauce, butter, flour, rice. 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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