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Lobster Curry

A creamy lobster curry made with fish stock, milk, coconut, curry paste, and apple, finished with lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Coconut and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,467 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Lobster Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curry base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Add the chopped onion, flour, and curry powder.

  3. Fry gently for 10 minutes.

  4. Stir in the stock, milk, curry paste, coconut, sliced apple, and salt.

  5. Bring to a boil.

  6. Cover and simmer gently for 1 hour, stirring occasionally.

Add the lobster and serve

  1. Remove the flesh from the lobster.

  2. Cut it into 1‑inch pieces.

  3. Strain the sauce through a fine strainer back into the saucepan.

  4. Adjust seasoning and reheat.

  5. Just before boiling, add the lobster pieces.

  6. Cover, and let sit off the heat for 15 to 20 minutes.

  7. Add lemon juice to taste.

  8. Serve with 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. Coconut + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Coconut + appletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together274 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylethanol (rose, floral).

  5. Coconut + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,831 recipes

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

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster
Provides the sweet, tender seafood flesh that forms the main body of the dish.
Butter
Carries the curry spices and adds richness to the sauce.
Onion
Softens and sweetens during slow frying, building the savoury base of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce slightly, giving it body.
Curry powder
Supplies the main spiced aroma and flavour of the curry.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mellows the spices in the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer gently and add the lobster late. Lobster flesh becomes firm and rubbery when overcooked. Adding it just before boiling and letting it sit off the heat gently warms it through while keeping it tender.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, fish, coconut, flour, butter, onion, lemon):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, fish, coconut, flour, butter, onion, 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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