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Fish Curry

A curry made with fish, eggs, potatoes, and sambals served over vermicelli or rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and rice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 851 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Fish Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the fish

  1. Heat a pan and add less dripping.

  2. Place the fish in the pan and cook for about 1 minute before adding other ingredients.

  3. Simmer gently for about 10 minutes.

  4. Avoid overcooking to prevent the fish from breaking.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove from heat and let it stand before serving.

  2. Add halved hard boiled eggs and small boiled potatoes before serving.

  3. Serve with vermicelli or rice and sambals.

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. Potato + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together851 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  2. Fish + ricetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together270 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Fish + potatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together134 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  4. Egg + sambaltop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Fish + eggtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,782 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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 dish and is delicate, so it needs gentle cooking to hold together.
Hard boiled eggs
Add richness and a soft, firm texture to the finished curry.
Small boiled potatoes
Add bulk and a soft, starchy texture that soaks up the curry flavour.

The step that matters

Simmer gently and avoid overcooking the fish. Fish proteins set and toughen with prolonged or vigorous heat, and the flesh can then break apart. Gentle simmering and resting off the heat keep the pieces intact and moist.

Swap the sambal

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, egg, potato, rice):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Sambalthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, egg, potato, rice. 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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