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Salmon Curry

A curry sauce made with butter, onion, curry powder, flour, apple, anchovy essence, lemon juice, and fish stock, served with salmon and rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Anchovy and fish work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 637 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Salmon Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a pan and fry the onion until soft but not browned.

  2. Add the curry powder and flour, and fry slowly for about 20 minutes.

  3. Pour in the fish stock or water, then add the chopped apple, onion, and salt to taste.

  4. Simmer gently for about 30 minutes, then strain the mixture.

Finish and serve

  1. Return the strained sauce to the pan and add the anchovy essence and lemon juice.

  2. Prepare the salmon by removing skin and bones, and flake it into large pieces.

  3. Add the salmon to the curry sauce, heat thoroughly, and serve with well-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. Anchovy + fishtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together637 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Salmon + anchovytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together535 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Salmon + fishtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,078 recipes

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

  4. Butter + fishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Salmon
Provides the main protein and flakes into the sauce as the core of the dish.
Curry powder
Supplies the spice aroma and flavour that define the curry.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter and curry powder.
Butter
Carries the spices and softens the onion, adding richness to the sauce.
Sour apple
Adds acidity and body that balance the richness of the sauce.
Fish stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding savoury depth.

The step that matters

Fry the curry powder and flour slowly. Frying the spices and flour gently for the full time toasts the spices and cooks out the raw floury taste. Too much heat can scorch the flour and make the sauce bitter, while too little leaves it pasty and dull.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, butter, flour, onion, lemon, anchovy, fish):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, butter, flour, onion, lemon, anchovy, 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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