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Lobster Curry

A stew of lobster meat simmered with mace, veal stock, corn starch, curry powder, butter, lemon juice, and milk or cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Lobster Curry

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a stew-pan, combine the lobster meat, mace, veal stock, and corn starch mixed with a little milk or cream.

  2. Add salt, butter, curry powder, and lemon juice.

  3. Simmer for 1 hour 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster meat
Provides the main flavour and tender, meaty texture of the dish.
Veal stock or gravy
Adds savoury body and depth to the sauce.
Corn starch
Thickens the liquid into a smooth, glossy sauce as it heats.
Curry powder
Supplies warm, aromatic spice flavour that defines the dish.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a silky mouthfeel.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, spiced sauce.

The step that matters

Mixing the corn starch and simmering. Corn starch must be mixed smoothly into cold milk or cream before it goes into the hot pan, otherwise it clumps. Starch thickens only once the sauce simmers and its granules swell, so the full simmer matters.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, lobster, veal, corn, milk, butter, lemon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, lobster, veal, corn, milk, butter, 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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