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Stuffed Lobster À LA Béchamel

A lobster dish stuffed with a béchamel sauce and baked with buttered crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Fannie Merritt Farmer · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon 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 ↓

Stuffed Lobster À LA Béchamel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Remove lobster meat from shell and dice it.

  2. Scald milk with bay leaf, remove bay leaf, and make a white sauce with butter, flour, and milk; add salt, cayenne, nutmeg, parsley, slightly beaten egg yolks, and lemon juice.

  3. Add lobster dice, refill shells, cover with buttered crumbs, and bake until crumbs are brown.

Optional richer sauce

  1. If a richer sauce is desired, replace milk with one-half chicken stock and one-half cream.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

916Calories
52 gProtein
28 gFat
114 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 11 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Shrimp100g cooked99
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Nutmeg1 tsp ground (2.2g)12
Lemonjuice of 1 lemon (48ml)12
Cayenne1 tsp (1.8g)6
Bay Leaf1 leaf (0.6g)2
Parsley1 tbsp chopped fresh (3.8g)1
Salt1 tsp (6g)0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Fannie Merritt Farmer. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster
Forms the main filling and provides the dish's substance and flavor.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the white sauce that binds the filling.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and helps brown the buttered crumbs on top.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a white sauce that holds the lobster together.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce as they set gently with heat.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks to the sauce. Egg yolks thicken when heated but can curdle or scramble if the sauce is too hot. Add them off the heat or with the sauce just warm, stirring constantly, so the sauce stays smooth and creamy.

“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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