Skip to main content
Main

Curried Lobster

A lobster dish simmered in curry powder, butter, and soup stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Onion and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 42,912 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Curried Lobster

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curry base

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

  2. Add the coarse sea salt, soup stock, and curry powder; cook gently for 5 minutes.

Add the lobster and serve

  1. Stir in the lobster and heat thoroughly.

  2. Serve immediately with plain 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 + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Lobster + buttertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

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

  3. Lobster + oniontop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together474 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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, which becomes tender when heated gently and firm when overcooked.
Butter
Adds fat that softens the onion and carries the curry flavor through the dish.
Minced onion
Softens and turns sweet as it cooks, forming the aromatic base of the sauce.
Curry powder
Releases aromatic spice compounds into the warm stock and butter, giving the dish its flavor.
Soup stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the seasoning and gently moistens the lobster.

The step that matters

Stir in the lobster and heat thoroughly. Lobster proteins toughen and turn rubbery when overheated, so the lobster should be warmed through just until hot rather than kept simmering.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits about as well
  2. Onionthe original
  3. Mustardfits about as well
  4. Chivefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, butter. 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

Lobster SauceLobster Sauce174 recipesLobster CroquettesLobster Croquettes99 recipesLobster BallsLobster Balls7 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes