Skip to main content
Main

Madras Prawn Curry

A curry of boiled shrimps or lobster with onions, garlic, curry powder, spinach, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Spinach and lemon 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 ↓

Madras Prawn Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. In a stew-pan, melt the butter and sauté the onions and garlic until soft.

  2. Add the curry powder and salt, stirring to combine.

  3. Add the shrimp or lobster meat and cook for a few minutes.

Add the spinach and finish

  1. In a separate saucepan, place the spinach without water and cook until wilted.

  2. Combine the spinach with the shrimp mixture, cover, and stir occasionally to prevent burning.

  3. If necessary, add a little water to keep it from drying out.

  4. Before serving, sour the dish with lemon juice.

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. Spinach + lemontop 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. Clove + spinachtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Shrimp + meattop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together584 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

Shrimp or prawns
Provide the main protein, which turns tender and opaque with brief cooking.
Butter
Carries the curry spices and adds richness and a rounded flavour.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook, forming the body of the sauce.
Curry powder
Supplies the main spice aroma and flavour of the dish.
Spinach
Adds leafy bulk and moisture as it wilts into the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the spices and balances the richness.

The step that matters

Covering and stirring the spinach mixture. Spinach releases water and can scorch on the base of the pan. Covering retains moisture, and occasional stirring prevents sticking and burning, which would make the dish taste bitter.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shrimp, meat, butter, onion, spinach, lemon):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shrimp, meat, butter, onion, spinach, 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesMeat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipesSpinach SoupSpinach Soup50 recipesMeatballsMeatballs37 recipes