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Currie of Lobster or Crab

A curry made with lobster or crab, coconut, curry powder, butter, onions, French beans, cream, and lemon juice, served over rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Garlic and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Currie of Lobster or Crab

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the paste

  1. Pound the garlic with salt, coconut, curry powder, and 1 ounce of butter into a smooth paste.

Make the curry

  1. Heat 4 ounces of butter in a stewpan until dissolved and mixed.

  2. Add the lobster, sliced onion, and French beans to the stewpan. Shake the pan to mix everything evenly.

  3. Add cream and lemon juice gradually while stirring.

  4. Stew slowly until the vegetables are tender.

Serve

  1. Serve the curry with rice, arranging the beans around the lobster.

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. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Garlic + beanstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,935 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Lobster + creamtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,050 recipes

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

  4. Onion + beanstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 recipes

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

  5. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster
Forms the main protein of the curry, becoming tender and firm when gently stewed.
Butter
Carries the curry spices and adds richness and a smooth, rounded flavour.
Curry powder
Provides the warm, aromatic spice that defines the dish.
Cream
Adds body and mellows the spices into a smoother, richer sauce.
French beans
Add a crisp-tender vegetable texture that softens during slow stewing.
Onion
Adds sweetness and savory depth as it softens in the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the cream and lemon juice. Adding cream and lemon juice gradually while stirring helps prevent the dairy from curdling when it meets the acid, keeping the sauce smooth.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Cuminfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, garlic, coconut, butter, onion, beans, cream. 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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