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Curried Shrimps

A shrimp dish simmered in a buttery, flour‑thickened curry sauce with chutney and boiled water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Shrimp and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,931 recipes. Both carry 2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, green. The science ↓

Curried Shrimps

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curry sauce

  1. In a saucepan, cook the minced onion and butter over medium heat for 2 minutes.

  2. Add the flour and curry powder; stir until bubbling.

  3. Gradually add the boiling water while stirring continuously.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the shrimps and cook for 5 minutes.

  2. Serve in a hot-water 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. Shrimp + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,931 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Shrimp + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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
Provides fat that cooks the onion and carries the curry flavour.
Flour
Thickens the boiling water into a smooth sauce as it bubbles.
Curry powder
Supplies the main spiced aroma and flavour of the sauce.
Shrimps
Provide the protein that cooks briefly in the sauce.

The step that matters

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

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

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