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Curried Prawns

A buttery curry of prawns simmered with onion, flour, curry powder, milk, and lemon, served over boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Curried Prawns

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a pan, melt the butter and fry the sliced onion until soft.

  2. Stir in the flour and curry powder, then gradually add the milk.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil and let it simmer for 10 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the prawns and lemon juice, then simmer gently for another 10 minutes.

  2. Serve the curried prawns in the center of a border of 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  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

Butter
Melts to form a fat base that carries the curry flavour and softens the onion.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce as it cooks.
Curry powder
Provides the main spiced aroma and flavour of the sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens as it simmers.
Prawns
Provide the main protein and mild sweetness in the finished curry.

The step that matters

Adding the milk to the flour. Adding liquid gradually while stirring helps the flour disperse evenly, preventing lumps and giving a smooth sauce before it is brought to a boil.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, milk, lemon, rice):

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, lemon, 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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