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Ceylon or Malay Curry

A prawn curry with coconut milk, cucumber, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and turmeric match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,776 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Ceylon or Malay Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curry

  1. Sauté onion, garlic, and ginger in a pan until fragrant.

  2. Add prawns and cook until they turn pink.

  3. Stir in cucumber and cook for a few minutes.

  4. Pour in coconut milk and add turmeric, cinnamon, and cloves.

  5. Simmer gently until cucumber is tender.

Serve

  1. Garnish with chili strips if desired.

  2. 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. Ginger + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Coconut + turmerictop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,027 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  5. Clove + turmerictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,876 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Prawns
Provide the main protein, turning pink and firm as they cook.
Fresh coconut milk
Adds richness and body to the sauce, mellowing the spices.
Cucumber
Adds a mild, crisp-turned-tender vegetable texture to the curry.
Turmeric powder
Gives the curry its yellow colour and an earthy, warm flavour.
Onion
Builds the sweet, savoury base as it softens and browns in the pan.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until cucumber is tender. Vigorous boiling can break the coconut milk and toughen the prawns, while gentle simmering keeps the sauce smooth and lets the cucumber soften evenly.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (coconut, milk, onion, clove, garlic, ginger, turmeric):

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against coconut, milk, onion, clove, garlic, ginger, turmeric. 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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