Skip to main content
Main

Prawns, Curried

Tinned prawns cooked in curry sauce, served with rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Rice and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,366 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Prawns, Curried

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the curry sauce as directed or use a tinned curry sauce.

Make and serve

  1. Heat the prawns in the sauce until thoroughly hot.

  2. Add lemon juice to taste.

  3. Serve the prawns in a border of rice or serve the rice separately.

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

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

  2. Sauce + ricetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,396 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sauce + lemontop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Prawns
Provide the main protein, which warms through gently in the curry sauce.
Curry sauce
Carries the flavour and moisture that coat the prawns.
Well-boiled rice
Serves as a starchy base that soaks up the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the curry.

The step that matters

Heat the prawns until thoroughly hot. Prawns are already cooked, so they only need to warm through. Overheating makes them tough and rubbery, while underheating leaves the sauce and prawns lukewarm and less flavourful.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, rice):

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesRice FrittersRice Fritters84 recipesSteamed RiceSteamed Rice48 recipesRice Griddle CakesRice Griddle Cakes28 recipes