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Fish Curry

A spiced fish dish cooked with ghee, gram, chillies, fenugreek, turmeric, coriander, onions, garlic, and vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Fenugreek and turmeric match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 229 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Fish Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Wash the fish with oil and pounded raw gram, then rinse in water.

  2. Fry the fish in ghee with coarse sea salt.

Make the spice mixture

  1. For each 2 pounds of fish, use ¾ cup of ghee, adding dried chillies, fenugreek, turmeric, roasted coriander, sliced onions, and pounded garlic.

  2. Rub the mixture over the fish.

  3. Add the fish to the ghee with fried chillies.

Cook the curry

  1. Add sufficient water to boil the fish.

  2. For acidity, add tamarind juice, vinegar, or lemon juice.

  3. Layer vegetables and fish in the pot, shaking gently to prevent breaking.

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. Fenugreek + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together229 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Turmeric + coriandertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,253 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Fenugreek + coriandertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together236 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Coriander + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Fish
Forms the main body of the curry and absorbs the spices and sour flavour.
Ghee
Carries the spices and adds rich fat and aroma as it fries the fish.
Dried chillies
Add heat and colour to the spiced ghee.
Sliced onions
Add sweetness and body as they cook into the sauce.
Tamarind juice or vinegar or lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the curry and balances the richness of the fat.
Vegetables
Add bulk, texture and sweetness to the curry.

The step that matters

Layer vegetables and fish in the pot, shaking gently to prevent breaking. Fish flakes apart when it is agitated or stirred hard during cooking, because its delicate protein structure breaks down under mechanical stress. Gentle shaking keeps the pieces intact while the sauce coats them.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, ghee, fenugreek, turmeric, coriander, onion, garlic):

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, ghee, fenugreek, turmeric, coriander, onion, garlic. 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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