Skip to main content
Main

Lobster Curried

A stew of lobster meat cooked with curry powder, butter, onion, fish stock, lemon juice, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Meat and fish work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 479 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Lobster Curried

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan.

  2. Add the curry powder and sliced onion.

  3. Cook until the onion is soft.

  4. Add the fish stock and lobster meat.

  5. Simmer gently for 1 hour.

  6. Squeeze in the lemon juice.

  7. Season with salt before serving.

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. Meat + fishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together479 recipes

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

  2. Butter + fishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

  3. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Fish + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,889 recipes

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

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster meat
Provides the main protein, which firms and turns opaque as it heats through.
Butter
Carries the curry powder's fat-soluble aromas and adds richness to the sauce.
Onion
Softens as it cooks, adding body and sweetness that balance the curry spices.
Curry powder
Supplies the dominant spiced flavour, and gentle frying in butter brings out its aroma.
Fish stock
Adds liquid and savoury depth, forming the simmering base of the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for 1 hour. A gentle simmer keeps lobster meat tender and prevents it from toughening, since rapid boiling causes proteins to tighten and dry out. Keeping the liquid below a rolling boil also stops the sauce from reducing too quickly.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, butter, onion, fish):

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Avocadofits about as well
  4. Grapefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, butter, onion, fish. 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

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesFried FishFried Fish120 recipesFish CroquettesFish Croquettes81 recipesScalloped CodScalloped Cod69 recipes