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Curry of Lobster, Crab, or Prawns

A creamy shellfish curry made with lobster, crab, or prawns, mace, veal gravy, cream, butter, curry powder, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter 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 Lobster, Crab, or Prawns

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the curry

  1. Remove the meat from the lobster, crab, or prawns and place it in a stewpan.

  2. Add mace, veal gravy, cream, butter, curry powder, and flour; mix until smooth.

  3. Simmer for 45 minutes to 1 hour.

Finish and serve

  1. Add salt and lemon juice before serving.

  2. Serve in a deep dish 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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Veal + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

Flour
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the shellfish rather than running thin.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying the curry powder's aroma through the sauce.
Cream
Adds moisture and a smooth, rich texture to the gravy base.
Veal gravy
Provides savoury depth and body as the main liquid of the sauce.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced aroma and flavour that define the dish.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for 45 minutes to 1 hour. A long, gentle simmer lets the flour fully cook out so it thickens smoothly without a raw starchy taste. Boiling hard can break the cream and toughen the delicate shellfish meat.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, veal, cream, butter, flour, lemon):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, veal, cream, butter, flour, lemon. 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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