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Jersey Fish

A fish dish with flour, butter, milk, curry paste, and spices, simmered and served with lemon juice and rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Jersey Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a pan.

  2. Fry the flour in the butter until it turns a straw color.

  3. Add the milk.

  4. Bring the mixture to a boil.

Prepare the fish

  1. Flake the cold fish.

  2. Brown the fish in a little hot fat.

  3. Spread the fish with the curry paste.

  4. Fry the chopped onion in the same fat.

  5. Drain the onion.

Combine and serve

  1. Add the onion to the sauce with the seasoning and fish.

  2. Simmer just off the boil for 30 minutes.

  3. Serve with lemon juice and rice on the side.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a smooth sauce when cooked together.
Butter
Carries the flour and fat for frying, adding richness to the sauce and fish.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce that the flour thickens.
White fish
Provides the main protein, which flakes into the sauce during simmering.
Curry powder
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavor to the sauce and fish.

The step that matters

Simmer just off the boil for 30 minutes. Simmering below a full boil keeps the milk sauce from scorching or breaking, and gentle heat lets the fish stay tender while the curry flavors blend.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, pepper, nutmeg, lemon, milk, fish):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, pepper, nutmeg, lemon, milk, fish. 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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