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A Capital Lobster Curry

A lobster curry made with lobster, onions, curry powder, butter, flour, gravy, lemon juice, salt, cream, served over rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lobster and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,050 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

A Capital Lobster Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Place the lobster portions in a pan.

Make the sauce

  1. Fry the sliced onions slightly in butter.

  2. Add curry powder, flour for thickening, and gravy to the pan.

  3. Boil for 30 minutes.

  4. Skim and strain through a fine sieve over the lobster.

  5. Add lemon juice and salt.

  6. Simmer for another 30 minutes.

  7. Stir in cream.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with plain 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. Lobster + creamtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Lemon + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  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

Lobsters
Provides the main protein and sweet, rich flavor of the dish.
Onions
Softened in butter, they add sweetness and body to the sauce base.
Curry powder
Supplies the warm, aromatic spice flavor that defines the curry.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so the sauce clings to the lobster and rice.
Gravy
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, carrying lobster flavor from the powdered shell.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, mellower texture to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Simmering after adding lemon juice and salt. Simmering for a further 30 minutes after the acid is added is done with the sauce still thickening; if boiled too hard, the flour-thickened sauce can break or become gluey and the delicate lobster can toughen. Stir cream in only after simmering to avoid curdling.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, onion, butter, flour, cream, rice):

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, onion, butter, flour, cream, 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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