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Prawn and Cucumber Curry

A curry of prawns and cucumber simmered with butter and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 24% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,185 recipes. Both carry 2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, green. The science ↓

Prawn and Cucumber Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumber

  1. Cut the cucumber lengthwise into quarters, remove the seeds, and peel off the green skin.

  2. Cut the cucumber into pieces 2 inches long and 1 inch thick.

Cook the cucumber

  1. Place the cucumber pieces in a stew-pan with plenty of water, butter, and salt.

  2. Simmer until three-quarters cooked.

  3. Drain the liquid.

  4. Transfer the cucumber pieces to a clean dish and cover to keep warm.

Prepare the prawns

  1. In a separate pot, dissolve 2 tablespoons of salt in a gallon of water.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Add the prawns (in their shells) to the boiling water.

  4. Cook the prawns until they turn rosy pink.

  5. Drain the prawns.

  6. Let the prawns cool.

  7. Shell the prawns and remove the heads.

  8. Using a knife, make a shallow cut along the back of each prawn to remove the black gritty dirt.

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. Cucumber + buttertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,185 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumber
Mild, watery vegetable whose moisture softens and carries flavour as it simmers.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a rounder flavour to the cooked cucumber.
Fresh prawns
Main protein; heat firms the flesh and turns it opaque and rosy pink.

The step that matters

Stop the cucumber at three-quarters cooked. Cucumber is mostly water and its flesh breaks down quickly. Simmering it fully makes it soft and limp, so stopping early helps the pieces keep their shape and texture in the curry.

“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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