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Lobster Curry

A coconut and curry sauce served with lobster pieces over rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Coconut and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,467 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Lobster Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Add the onion, flour, and curry powder; fry gently for about 10 minutes.

  3. Stir in the stock, milk, curry paste, coconut, sliced apple, and salt; bring to a boil.

  4. Cover and simmer gently for about 1 hour, stirring occasionally.

  5. Strain the sauce through a fine strainer, return it to the saucepan, and adjust seasoning.

Add the lobster and serve

  1. Remove the lobster flesh and cut it into 1-inch pieces.

  2. Reheat the sauce until just before boiling, then add the lobster pieces.

  3. Cover and let it sit off the heat for 15 to 20 minutes to heat the lobster and infuse flavor.

  4. Add lemon juice to taste and serve with 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. Coconut + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  2. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Coconut + appletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together274 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylethanol (rose, floral).

  5. Coconut + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,831 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

Flour and butter 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

Lobster
Provides the main protein and sweet, delicate seafood flavour in the finished curry.
Butter
Carries the curry spices into the onion and adds rich fat and flavour to the sauce.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it cooks, forming the body and base flavour of the sauce.
Curry powder
Supplies the warm, aromatic spice character that defines the dish, bloomed in fat.
Flour
Thickens the sauce slightly so it coats the lobster rather than running thin.
Apple
Adds mild natural sweetness and body that softens during the long simmer.

The step that matters

Reheating the sauce before adding the lobster. If the sauce is brought to a hard boil, the lobster becomes tough and rubbery. Keeping it just below boiling heats the lobster gently and keeps it tender.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, fish, coconut, flour, butter, onion, lemon):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, fish, coconut, flour, butter, onion, 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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