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Prawns, Curried

A dish of prawns cooked in curry sauce served over rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,366 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Prawns, Curried

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Make the curry sauce as directed or use tinned curry sauce.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat the prawns in the sauce until thoroughly hot.

  2. Add lemon juice to taste.

  3. Serve in a border of rice or separately.

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

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

  2. Sauce + ricetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,396 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sauce + lemontop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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, which becomes tender when gently heated in the sauce.
Curry sauce
Carries the spice flavour and keeps the prawns moist while they heat through.
Well-boiled rice
Forms a starchy base that soaks up the sauce and balances its heat.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the curry sauce.

The step that matters

Heat the prawns until thoroughly hot. Prawns cook quickly and turn rubbery when overheated, so they should be warmed through in the sauce just until hot rather than simmered for long.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, rice):

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, rice. 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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