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Prawn Pellow with Lobster

A prawn pellow made with boiled lobsters, onions, ginger, peppercorns, bay leaves, coriander seed, sea salt, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and coriander match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,505 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Prawn Pellow with Lobster

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the lobsters

  1. Boil lobsters with plenty of seasoning: onions, ginger, peppercorns, bay leaves, coriander seed, and salt in sufficient water for gravy.

  2. Remove and shell the lobsters, reserving the roe in the heads.

Make the gravy and pellow

  1. Bruise the roe with a little coriander seed and mix with the fish gravy.

  2. Prepare the pellow using the fish gravy instead of coconut or other gravy.

Serve

  1. Garnish with the lobsters.

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. Ginger + coriandertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Onion + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,595 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Onion + coriandertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  5. Lobster + gingertop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together38 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Lobsters
Provide the main protein and flavour, and their roe enriches the gravy.
Onions
Build savoury sweetness and body in the seasoned cooking liquid for the gravy.
Sliced ginger
Adds a warm, aromatic note to the cooking liquid.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, ginger, coriander. 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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