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Prawn Malay Gravy Curry with White Pumpkin or Cucumber

A prawn curry cooked with white pumpkin, coconut milk, and lemon grass.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Coconut and lemon grass match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 274 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Prawn Malay Gravy Curry with White Pumpkin or Cucumber

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the heads and shells from the prawns.

Make the curry

  1. Heat ghee in a pan and fry the ground condiments and hot spices until brown.

  2. Add the prawns and salt, frying until they are a light brown.

  3. Drain the water from the pumpkin and add it to the pan.

  4. Pour in 2 cups of coconut milk and add the lemon grass and hot spices.

  5. Simmer over low heat for about 30 minutes until the curry is ready.

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. Coconut + lemon grasstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together274 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Coconut + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,648 recipes

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

  3. Pumpkin + coconuttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together302 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  4. Pumpkin + lemon grasstop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Pumpkin + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Bagda prawns
Provide the main protein, which turns opaque and firm as it cooks.
Coconut milk
Adds richness and body, giving the curry a creamy, mellow sauce.
White pumpkin
Softens as it simmers, adding body and mild sweetness to the sauce.
Ground condiments
Fried in ghee to bloom their aroma and deepen the curry's flavour.

The step that matters

Frying the ground condiments and hot spices in ghee. Frying spices in fat until browned releases fat-soluble aroma compounds. Burning them turns the flavour bitter, so keep the heat moderate and watch closely.

Swap the pumpkin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ghee, coconut, milk, lemon grass):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Mangofits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Pumpkinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ghee, coconut, milk, lemon grass. 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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