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Cuny Sauce with Shrimps and Red Mullet

A curry sauce with onions, apples, anchovy sauce, and shrimps served over boiled rice with red mullet.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Anchovy and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,057 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Cuny Sauce with Shrimps and Red Mullet

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the curry sauce

  1. Fry the onions in butter until browned.

  2. Add the apples and brown gravy.

  3. Rub the mixture through a sieve.

  4. Mix in curry paste and curry powder.

  5. Thicken to desired consistency.

  6. Heat ½ cup of the sauce. Add anchovy sauce.

  7. Add shrimps and cook for 1 minute.

  8. Serve with boiled rice.

Prepare the mullet packet

  1. Prepare a piece of oiled paper.

  2. Chop capers finely.

  3. Slice butter.

  4. Layer butter and capers on the paper.

  5. Season with pepper and salt.

  6. Place the mullet on top.

  7. Fold the paper to create a sealed packet.

Bake

  1. Place the packet in a greased tin.

  2. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 30 minutes.

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 + saucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Onion + caperstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Anchovy + caperstop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together473 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

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

  5. Rice + caperstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together121 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Browned slowly in butter, they add sweetness and savoury depth to the sauce base.
Apples
Break down into the sieved mixture, adding sweetness, body and a mellow fruity note.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and helping the onions brown.
Curry powder
Releases aromatic compounds in the hot sauce, giving the dish its characteristic spiced flavour.
Anchovy sauce
Contributes salty, savoury umami that deepens the flavour of the sauce.
Shrimps
Provide the main protein, cooking quickly in the hot sauce to become tender.

The step that matters

Add shrimps and cook for 1 minute.. Shrimp proteins set quickly in hot liquid. A short cook keeps them tender and juicy, while longer cooking tightens the proteins and makes them rubbery.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, butter, anchovy, sauce, shrimp, rice, capers):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, anchovy, sauce, shrimp, rice, capers. 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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