Skip to main content
Main

Lobsters

Lobsters boiled in salted or bicarbonate solution, then chilled and optionally cooked in vinegar water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lobster and vinegar work together. They rank in the top 25% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 692 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Lobsters

Ingredients

Directions

Salt boil and chill

  1. Plunge live lobsters into rapidly boiling water with 2-3% coarse sea salt and cook for 30 minutes.

  2. Chill lobsters in cold water.

Soda bath

  1. Plunge lobsters into boiling water with a 3% bicarbonate of soda solution and cook for 15 minutes.

  2. Remove the solution, cover with cold water mixed with vinegar to neutralize the soda, and cook for another 15 minutes.

  3. Chill in cold water.

Kill and finish

  1. Cut the lobster at the joint where the tail and body shell meet to kill it, then cook using either method.

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. Lobster + vinegartop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together692 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

What each ingredient does

Live lobsters
The main protein; its shell and meat set and firm as they cook.
Bicarbonate of soda
Raises the pH of the cooking water, which helps the shell release from the meat.
Vinegar
Acidifies the cover water to neutralize leftover soda on the lobster before the final cook.

The step that matters

Neutralizing the soda bath. Soda is alkaline, and any residue left on the shell or meat can leave a soapy, bitter taste. Removing the solution and cooking in vinegar-acidified water neutralizes it before the final cook.

“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

Lobster SauceLobster Sauce174 recipesLobster CroquettesLobster Croquettes99 recipesLobster BallsLobster Balls7 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes