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Prawns, Curried

A curry dish made with prawns, butter, onion, curry powder, flour, milk, lemon juice, and rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Prawns, Curried

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curry sauce

  1. In a hot pan, brown the onion in the butter.

  2. Stir in the curry powder and flour, cooking slowly for 5 minutes.

  3. Add the milk and stir until it boils, then cover and let simmer gently for 30 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the prawns and lemon juice, season to taste, and cook gently for 10 minutes.

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

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

  2. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  3. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Prawns
Provide the main protein, which firms and turns opaque as it cooks.
Butter
Carries the curry flavour and cooks the onion gently for a rich base.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced aroma and colour that define the dish.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, coating sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid body of the sauce, giving it creaminess.

The step that matters

Simmer the milk sauce gently. Once the milk boils, the flour-thickened sauce can scorch on the base or catch if left unstirred. Gentle simmering keeps it smooth and evenly thickened before the prawns go in.

Swap the onion

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

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

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