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A curry of lobster or prawn meat simmered with veal gravy, curry powder, butter, flour, shallot, lemon juice, and salt, served over rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,523 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

To Curry Lobsters or Prawns

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the meat from the shells and place it in a stewpan.

  2. Add veal gravy.

  3. Add curry powder mixed with butter.

  4. Add flour and shallot.

Cook and serve

  1. Simmer for 15 minutes.

  2. Squeeze in lemon juice.

  3. Add salt to taste.

  4. Serve garnished with boiled rice.

  5. Sprinkle with lobster spawn.

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. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Flour + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Shallot + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together284 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

Lobster or prawn meat
Provides the main protein and sweet flavour of the dish.
Veal gravy
Supplies the liquid base and savoury body of the sauce.
Curry powder
Gives the sauce its spiced aroma and characteristic flavour.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the meat and rice.
Butter
Carries the curry powder's flavour and adds richness to the sauce.

The step that matters

Add curry powder mixed with butter. Frying spices gently in fat releases their fat-soluble aroma compounds, so blooming them in butter before adding liquid gives a fuller curry flavour than stirring in raw powder.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, veal, butter, flour, shallot, rice):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Raisinfits less well
  4. Avocadofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, veal, butter, flour, shallot, 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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