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Lobster in Shells

A lobster dish baked in its shell with breadcrumbs, spices, lemon, butter, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Lobster in Shells

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Remove the lobster meat from the shell and chop it finely.

  3. Mix the lobster meat with bread crumbs, nutmeg, cayenne pepper, lemon rind, lemon juice, butter, and sweet cream.

Fill and bake

  1. Return the mixture to the lobster shells.

  2. Dust lightly with additional bread crumbs and dot with butter.

  3. Bake in the oven until browned.

Serve

  1. Garnish with parsley and lemon before serving.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  4. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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 filling and the sweet, delicate flavour of the dish.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the butter and cream and add body, giving the filling structure and a crisp top.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps the crumb topping brown in the oven.
Sweet cream
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the filling tender rather than dry.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich lobster and cream flavours.

The step that matters

Bake in the oven until browned. The filling is already cooked lobster, so the bake mainly sets the mixture and browns the crumb topping. Pulling it out too early leaves the top pale, while overbaking dries the lobster and toughens it.

“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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