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Curry of Lobster

A lobster curry made with butter, onion, herbs, curry powder, flour, broth, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Curry of Lobster

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Break out the meat from the lobster.

Make the curry

  1. In a stewpan, melt the butter and add the onion, parsley, thyme, and lemon; sweat over low heat.

  2. Stir in the curry powder and flour; cook until the flour is thoroughly cooked.

  3. Strain the gravy from the lobster body and gradually stir it into the mixture.

  4. Let it boil for 30 minutes; then rub through a sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. Season with salt and lemon juice, add the lobster meat, and keep warm for 1 hour.

  2. Bring to a boil before serving.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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, rich flavour to the curry.
Butter
Carries the aromatics and adds richness and a rounded mouthfeel.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced aroma that defines the dish.
Flour
Thickens the gravy, giving it body once cooked with the fat.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and a base layer of flavour as it softens.
Broth
Forms the liquid body of the sauce that carries the other flavours.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour with the curry powder. Flour must be cooked fully in the fat before liquid is added; otherwise it keeps a raw, pasty taste and thickens unevenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, butter, parsley, thyme, lemon, flour):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, butter, parsley, thyme, lemon, flour. 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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