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Curried Lobster

A lobster dish simmered with butter, oyster liquor, wine, curry powder, lemon peel, served over rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and white wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,083 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Curried Lobster

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice

  1. Soak the rice for 3 hours, then salt it.

  2. Cook the rice in boiling water until tender, shaking occasionally.

  3. Drain the rice and set it aside to dry.

Make the curried lobster

  1. In a pan, heat the butter and oyster liquor together.

  2. Season with curry powder and lemon peel.

  3. Add the lobster, cut into half-inch pieces, and toss until heated through.

  4. Stir in the wine and serve on a heated dish.

Serve

  1. On each plate, place a spoonful of rice and top with lobster.

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. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. White wine + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  3. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

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

  4. Butter + oystertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  5. Meat + ricetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,481 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

Lobster
Provides the main protein and the body of the dish, heated through in the sauce.
Butter
Carries the curry flavour and adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the sauce.
Oyster liquor
Adds briny, savoury depth to the sauce as its liquid base.
White wine
Adds acidity and brightness that lifts the rich butter and seafood flavours.
Curry powder
Supplies the warm, aromatic spice flavour that defines the dish.
Raw rice
Forms the starchy base that soaks up the sauce and gives a neutral, tender bed for the lobster.

The step that matters

Heating the lobster in the sauce. Lobster turns tough and rubbery when overcooked, so it should be tossed only until heated through. Curry powder is also best bloomed briefly in warm fat, so the spice flavour is fully released.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, butter, oyster, white wine, rice):

  1. Grapefits about as well
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, butter, oyster, white wine, 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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