Skip to main content
Main

Fish Moulee

A fish stew made with coconut milk, ginger, chili, onion, curry powder, lime, and chutney.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Ginger and lime match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,621 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Fish Moulee

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Shred the coconut and prepare it as for curry.

  2. Scrape the ginger, cut it into thin slices, and place it in a fireproof dish.

  3. Add the sliced chili and onion to the dish.

  4. Mix in the curry powder, pepper, salt, lime juice, and chutney juice.

Make the sauce

  1. Pour the cream from the coconut milk over the mixture, cover, and stew gently for five minutes.

  2. Allow the mixture to cool.

Cook and serve

  1. Cut the fish into four or six pieces and lay them in the dish, basting with the liquid.

  2. Cook on low heat until the fish is just done, about five minutes.

  3. Serve alone or with vermicelli or 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. Ginger + limetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,621 recipes

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

  2. Lime + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,491 recipes

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

  3. Lime + coconuttop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together934 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Ginger + coconuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,168 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Ginger + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Ikan kurau fish
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking gently in the seasoned coconut liquid.
Coconut
Its cream adds richness and moisture, mellowing the spices into a smooth sauce.
Onion
Softens as it stews, adding sweetness and body to the sauce.
Ginger
Adds a warm, aromatic note that lifts the fish flavour.
Curry powder
Provides aromatic spice that flavours the coconut sauce.

The step that matters

Cook the fish on low heat. Fish is delicate and its proteins firm and dry out quickly when overcooked. Gentle heat keeps it moist and tender, so it should be removed as soon as it is just opaque and flakes easily.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ginger, lime, coconut, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ginger, lime, coconut, pepper. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes