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Curry of Lobster

A spicy lobster dish simmered in a butter and curry sauce with lime juice and rice flour thickener.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lime and rice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,014 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Curry of Lobster

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the meat from the lobsters and cut it into neat pieces.

  2. Set aside the green fat and coral.

  3. Mix the green fat with the curry powder.

  4. Squeeze the juice from the limes and add the powdered sugar.

  5. Wash and dry the coral, then separate it.

Make the curry

  1. In a frying pan, melt the butter.

  2. Once creamed, add the minced onion and brown slightly.

  3. Add the mixed curry powder to the pan.

  4. Dissolve the rice flour in cold water and add it to the hot water or soup stock.

  5. Simmer until thick.

  6. Add the lobster pieces and simmer for 20 minutes.

Serve

  1. Prepare a border of rice on a dish.

  2. Sprinkle the coral over the rice.

  3. Pour the curry in the center.

  4. 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. Lime + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,014 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + limetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,263 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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 tender, sweet meat that the curry sauce surrounds.
Butter
Carries the curry flavour and adds richness to the sauce.
Rice flour
Thickens the hot liquid into a smooth sauce as it simmers.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced aroma and colour that define the dish.
Limes
Add acidity that brightens the rich curry flavour.
Powdered sugar
Balances the acidity of the lime juice with a touch of sweetness.

The step that matters

Dissolve the rice flour in cold water before adding it to the hot liquid. Starch dispersed in cold water mixes evenly; added directly to hot liquid it clumps, leaving lumps in the sauce. The sauce thickens as the starch gelatinises during simmering.

Swap the lime

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Limethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, butter, onion, sugar, rice, flour. 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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