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Lobster Curry

A spicy lobster stew with butter, onions, curry powder, stock, lemon, and cayenne served over rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Lobster Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the boiled lobster into dice.

  2. Fry the minced onions in butter until soft.

Make the curry

  1. Stir in the curry powder and stock or water.

  2. Stew the mixture until it begins to thicken.

  3. Add the lobster meat and stew for about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.

  4. Just before serving, add the lemon juice, salt, and cayenne.

Serve

  1. Serve with a wall of boiled rice around the edge and the lobster in the middle.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Lemon + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster
Provides the main protein and sweet, delicate meat that the sauce surrounds.
Onions
Softened in butter, they add sweetness and body to the curry base.
Butter
Carries the curry powder's flavour and adds richness when frying the onions.
Curry powder
Supplies the spice blend that gives the dish its characteristic aroma and flavour.
Stock or water
Liquid that dissolves the curry flavours and, when stewed, thickens into a sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, spiced sauce just before serving.

The step that matters

Stewing the lobster gently. Lobster meat turns tough and rubbery when overcooked, so it should be added to the sauce only to heat through and stewed gently, not boiled hard.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, butter, lemon, pepper, rice):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, butter, lemon, pepper, 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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