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Lobster Cukeied

Lobster meat simmered in a curry sauce of butter, onion, and fish stock, finished with lemon juice and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and spinach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,109 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Lobster Cukeied

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curry base

  1. In a stewpan, combine curry powder, butter, onion, and fish stock.

  2. Stew the mixture well.

Cook the lobster

  1. Add the lobster meat and simmer gently for 1 hour.

  2. Squeeze in the lemon juice and season with salt.

Add the spinach juice

  1. For spinach juice, cook spinach without water.

  2. Press out the spinach juice.

  3. Add the spinach juice with butter, cayenne, and salt to the gravy.

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. Lemon + spinachtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,109 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Onion + spinachtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,336 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 cooks gently in the sauce.
Curry powder
Supplies the dominant spice aroma and flavour that defines the dish.
Butter
Adds fat that carries the curry flavour and gives the gravy a rich, smooth texture.
Onion
Releases sugars as it stews, adding body and sweetness to the gravy.
Fish stock
Provides liquid and savoury depth, forming the base of the gravy.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, spiced gravy.

The step that matters

Simmer the lobster gently. Lobster meat turns tough and rubbery if it boils or cooks too hard. A gentle simmer keeps the proteins tender while the sauce develops flavour.

Swap the spinach

The recipe marks spinach as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, butter, onion, fish, lemon):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Spinachthe original

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