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Lobster Curry

A spicy lobster stew made with onions, butter, curry powder, stock, and lemon juice, served over rice.

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

Lobster Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pick the meat from the lobster shell and cut it into square pieces.

Make the curry

  1. Fry the onions in butter until pale brown.

  2. Stir in the curry powder and stock, then simmer until it thickens.

  3. Add the lobster meat and stew slowly for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.

  4. Just before serving, add the lemon juice.

Serve

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

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

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

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

  4. Onion + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,646 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. 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, and gently stewing it keeps the meat tender.
Onions
Softened and browned in butter, they build the sweet savoury base of the sauce.
Butter
Carries the frying of the onions and adds richness to the sauce.
Curry powder
Supplies the spice blend that gives the dish its characteristic aroma and flavour.
Medium stock
Forms the liquid that simmers with the curry powder and thickens into the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, spiced sauce just before serving.

The step that matters

Stewing the lobster meat. Lobster turns rubbery when overcooked, so it should be added late and stewed gently for only the stated time, with occasional stirring to keep it evenly heated in the sauce.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, onion, 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.

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