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Curried Shrimps

A shrimp curry made with onion, butter, flour, curry powder, water, chutney sauce, and served with rice and bananas.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,433 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Curried Shrimps

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curry

  1. Cook the minced onion and butter in a saucepan over medium heat for 2 minutes.

  2. Add the flour and curry powder, stirring until they bubble.

  3. Gradually stir in the boiling water.

  4. Add the chutney sauce and salt to taste.

  5. Stir in the shrimps and cook for 5 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve in a deep dish with ice‑cold bananas and 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. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

  2. Butter + shrimptop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,931 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  3. Shrimp + ricetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,055 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-methylbutanol (malty, whiskey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Banana + ricetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together228 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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
Fat that cooks the onion and carries flavour from the spices.
Flour
Thickens the boiling water into a smooth, lightly bodied sauce.
Curry powder
Provides the main spiced aroma and flavour of the sauce.
Shrimps
Provide the protein and tender texture in the finished curry.

The step that matters

Adding the boiling water. Pouring it in gradually while stirring keeps the flour smooth, so lumps do not form in the sauce.

Swap the banana

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Mangofits better
  4. Bananathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, flour, sauce, shrimp, 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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