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Creamed Lobster

Creamed lobster made with lobster meat, milk, butter, flour, crumbs, and seasonings, served with lemon and crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Creamed Lobster

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. If using canned lobster, strain off the lobster liquor.

  2. Cut the lobster meat into small dice and season it, then set aside.

Make the sauce

  1. Heat the milk or cream in a saucepan, adding a tiny bit of baking soda.

  2. When hot, stir in the butter mixed with flour until it thickens, then add the lobster.

Bake and serve

  1. Prepare buttered scallop shells and fill them with the mixture.

  2. Top with dry bread crumbs and brown in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

  3. Serve with sliced lemon and crackers.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  5. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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 protein and flavor, forming the body of the dish.
Milk or cream
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving a rich, smooth texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and carries flavor through the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a creamy sauce that holds the lobster together.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden top when baked.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce with butter and flour. Flour must be cooked into the hot milk so it thickens smoothly; if added lumpy or left too thin, the sauce can clump or stay runny. Heating the mixture until it visibly thickens sets the texture before the lobster is added.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, milk, cream, butter, flour, pepper, bread):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Vanillafits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, milk, cream, butter, flour, pepper, bread. 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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