Skip to main content
Main

Lobster, Curried

A curry dish of tinned lobster cooked in a milk-based curry sauce and served with boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Rice and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lobster, Curried

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare, boil, and dry the rice carefully.

Make the curry sauce

  1. Melt butter in a stewpan and fry the onion until lightly browned.

  2. Add the flour and curry powder, cooking for 2-3 minutes.

  3. Pour in the milk and bring to a boil, stirring continuously.

Finish and serve

  1. Divide the lobster into about 8 pieces and add to the curry sauce with the rice.

  2. Add lemon juice and salt to taste.

  3. Let the stewpan sit by the fire until the contents are thoroughly hot, then serve.

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. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Rice + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster
Provides the main protein and sweet, delicate flavour of the dish.
Patna rice
Forms the starchy base that soaks up the curry sauce.
Milk
Forms the body of the sauce and mellows the curry spices.
Curry powder
Supplies the warm, aromatic spice flavour that defines the dish.
Flour
Thickens the sauce with the butter as a roux.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma as it browns in the butter.

The step that matters

Pour in the milk and bring to a boil, stirring continuously. Flour thickens liquid only when its starch granules are dispersed and heated, and constant stirring prevents lumps and scorching on the base of the pan. Stopping early leaves the sauce thin and floury.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, rice, milk, flour, onion):

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, rice, milk, flour, onion. 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 recipesLobster SauceLobster Sauce174 recipesLobster CroquettesLobster Croquettes99 recipesRice FrittersRice Fritters84 recipes