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Curry of Prawns

A curry made with prawns, onion, apple, cocoa-nut, curry powder and cream, sieved into a smooth sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Curry of Prawns

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Skin and scald the onion, then chop it finely and add to the pan.

  3. Peel and chop the apple, then add it to the pan.

  4. Stir the onion and apple in the butter over medium heat for 10 minutes until the onion browns.

  5. Stir in the rice flour, grated cocoa-nut, curry powder, chutney, lemon juice, salt, and stock.

  6. Cook until soft enough to pass through a sieve.

  7. Rub the mixture through a wire sieve into a clean pan.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the whipped cream and the shelled prawns, cooking for 7 minutes.

  2. Place the prawns in the center of a dish and pour the sauce over them.

  3. Garnish with the prawns in their shells and serve with rice on a separate dish.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Apple + cocoatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together52 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Rice + cocoatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together93 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Fat that softens the onion and apple and carries the curry flavour.
Onion
Provides bulk and sweetness as it softens and browns, forming the sauce base.
Apple
Adds mild sweetness and body that helps the sauce thicken when sieved.
Rice flour
Thickens the sauce so it coats the prawns.
Whipped cream
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture to the sauce.
Prawns
Main protein, cooked gently in the sauce until just done.

The step that matters

Adding the prawns and cream. Once the cream and prawns go into the sauce, prolonged boiling can make cream separate and prawns turn rubbery. Keep the heat gentle and watch the 7 minutes closely.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, onion, apple, rice, flour, cocoa, cream):

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, apple, rice, flour, cocoa, cream. 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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