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Lobster Curry

A lobster curry made with butter, curry powder, wine, broth, and cream.

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 ↓

Lobster Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Extract the meat from the lobster and cut it into inch-sized pieces.

  2. Melt 1 tablespoon of butter in a pan, add the lobster, season with salt and pepper, and cook for 5 minutes.

  3. Mix curry powder with white wine, add to the lobster, stir, and cook for another 5 minutes; cover and set aside.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt ½ tablespoon of butter, add flour, stir, and cook for 2 minutes.

  2. Add chicken or veal broth and a small bouquet; cook for 5 minutes.

  3. Mix egg yolks with lemon juice and add to the sauce along with cream; season with salt.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the lobster and serve.

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. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. White wine + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. White wine + chickentop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,904 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

Lobster
Provides the main protein and sweet, tender meat that the curry sauce coats.
Curry powder
Supplies the warm, aromatic spice flavour that defines the dish.
Butter
Carries the spices and adds richness to the lobster and the roux.
Flour
Thickens the broth into a smooth sauce when cooked briefly in butter.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce, giving it a silky, creamy body.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, mellow texture to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk and lemon mixture to the sauce. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat; if the sauce boils after they are added, they can scramble and turn grainy. Keep the heat low and stir steadily.

“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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