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Prawn, Dill & Cucumber Pasta

Supper can be ready in 25 minutes with just six fresh ingredients and a bag of pasta

By bbcgoodfood · From Open Recipes · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pasta and cucumber match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and 298 recipes mention both. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

The recipe

Serves 4 - 6
Prep10 min
Cook12 min

Ingredients

Contains: milk, wheat, shellfish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Method written by CompKitchen from the ingredient list. Not the original author's method, not kitchen-tested.

  1. Bring a large pan of water to the boil. Add the pasta shapes and cook according to the packet until tender, about 10 minutes. Drain well.

  2. While the pasta cooks, dice the cucumber and shred the fennel bulb finely, then set them aside in a large bowl.

  3. In a separate small bowl, stir the half-fat soured cream with the lemon juice until smooth.

  4. Add the hot drained pasta to the bowl with the cucumber and fennel, then stir in the soured cream mixture so everything is evenly coated.

  5. Add the cooked prawns and stir over gentle heat or in the warm pasta for about 2 minutes, until the prawns are heated through.

  6. Fold in the chopped dill and serve immediately.

By bbcgoodfood. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Pasta + cucumbertop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together298 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Dill + fenneltop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  3. Dill + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together976 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Lemon + fenneltop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together723 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Dill + cucumbertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together530 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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