Why it works: Fish and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,488 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓
Curry. No. 7
Ingredients
Directions
Cut the meat into slices.
In a pan, half fry the meat with the onions in butter.
Add the curry powder and fry for a little longer.
Stir in the water, acid, and salt.
Let it stew until the meat is fully cooked.
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.
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Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,488 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together42,912 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Fish + oniontop 19% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together1,924 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Onions
- Soften and sweeten as they fry, building the base flavour of the sauce.
- Butter
- Carries the frying and adds richness and fat to the sauce.
- Curry powder
- Provides the main spice aroma, which blooms when fried briefly in fat.
- Acid of your choice
- Adds sharpness that brightens the rich, spiced sauce.
The step that matters
Let it stew until the meat is fully cooked. Stewing gently in liquid lets tough connective tissue break down and the meat become tender. Stopping too early leaves it chewy, and boiling hard can toughen the proteins and dry the meat out.
Swap the onion
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, butter):
- Potatofits better
- Leekfits about as well
- Onionthe original
- Asparagusfits about as well
Fit is the average pairing score against fish, butter. 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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