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Cold Fish Currie

Cold boiled fish is fried in butter and simmered in a spiced vinegar sauce, then chilled and served with rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Cold Fish Currie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Cut the cold boiled fish into round thick slices.

  2. Fry the fish in butter until heated through.

Make the spiced vinegar

  1. In a pot, combine vinegar, salt, garlic, turmeric, cloves, nutmeg, ginger, and black pepper, then boil the mixture until fragrant and pour it hot over the fish.

Marinate and serve

  1. Cover the dish tightly and let it sit for 24 hours.

  2. Serve cold 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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + turmerictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,876 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Turmeric + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together372 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Garlic + turmerictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,363 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Fish (salmon, sole, cod, or haddock)
Forms the main body of the dish and absorbs the spiced vinegar as it sits.
Vinegar
Acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the fish during the long rest.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma that mellows and deepens during the spiced vinegar infusion.
Turmeric
Gives the curry its yellow colour and earthy, slightly bitter flavour.
Cloves
Contributes warm, aromatic spice notes that come through once the mixture is boiled.

The step that matters

Pouring the boiling spiced vinegar over the fish. Heating the vinegar mixture until fragrant releases the volatile aroma compounds of the spices, so pouring it hot lets them penetrate the fish more fully than cold liquid would.

Swap the garlic

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, butter, vinegar, fish, clove, turmeric, nutmeg):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, butter, vinegar, fish, clove, turmeric, nutmeg. 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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