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Curried Prawns

A sauce of butter, onion, flour, curry powder, milk, lemon, and prawns served over rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Curried Prawns

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a pan, melt the butter and fry the minced onion until soft.

  2. Stir in the flour and curry powder, cooking for a minute.

  3. Gradually add the milk, stirring until it boils. Cook for 10 minutes.

  4. Season to taste, then strain the sauce.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the prawns and lemon juice, cooking gently for another 10 minutes.

  2. Serve in the center of a border of boiled rice.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Butter
Carries the onion and spices and enriches the sauce with fat and flavour.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce as it cooks.
Curry powder
Provides the main spiced aroma and flavour of the dish.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens as it heats.
Prawns
Provide the main protein and tender texture in the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the prawns and lemon juice. Prawns turn tough and rubbery if overcooked, so they should simmer gently in the sauce. Lemon juice adds acidity that brightens the sauce's flavour.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, lemon. 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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