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Curried Lobster

A lobster dish cooked with onion, butter, curry powder, stock, and salt, served with boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 42,912 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Curried Lobster

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Fry the chopped onion in butter until soft.

  2. Add curry powder and stock, and cook for 5 minutes.

  3. Stir in salt and diced lobster, and heat thoroughly.

  4. Serve immediately with plain 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. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Butter + lobstertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

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

  3. Onion + lobstertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together474 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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 seafood flavour in the dish.
Onion
Softens while frying and adds sweetness and savoury depth to the sauce base.
Curry powder
Supplies the warm spice aroma that defines the flavour of the dish.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and carries the curry flavours.
Butter
Fat for frying the onion, adding richness and helping it soften evenly.

The step that matters

Heating the lobster thoroughly. Lobster cooks quickly and turns rubbery and tough if overheated. Heat it gently in the sauce only until it is hot all the way through.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits about as well
  2. Onionthe original
  3. Mustardfits about as well
  4. Chivefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, lobster. 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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