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Lobster Currie

A stew of lobster meat simmered with onions, butter, curry powder, gravy, and vinegar or lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,226 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Lobster Currie

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Fry the onions in butter until nicely browned.

  2. Mix curry powder with gravy and add to the fried onions in a stewpan.

  3. Cut the lobster meat into small pieces and add to the stewpan along with vinegar or lemon juice.

  4. Simmer slowly for about 30 minutes and serve.

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. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  2. Meat + lobstertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together909 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + meattop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Onion + meattop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,364 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Frying them until browned builds a sweet, savoury base for the sauce.
Curry powder
Provides the main spiced flavour of the curry.
Lobster meat
Supplies the main protein and its sweet, delicate flavour.
Gravy
Forms the liquid that carries the curry powder and binds the dish together.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly for about 30 minutes. Gentle simmering lets the curry powder bloom and the sauce thicken and blend with the onions, while a hard boil can toughen the lobster meat and make the sauce taste harsh. Keep the heat low and the liquid barely bubbling.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, meat, lobster, vinegar):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Onionthe original
  4. Capsicumfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, meat, lobster, vinegar. 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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