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Baked Lobster

A lobster dish baked after steaming, seasoned with lemon or cream, bread crumbs, and served with lobster butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Baked Lobster

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the lobster

  1. Stew the lobster for 13 to 20 minutes.

  2. Shred the meat and return it to the shells.

  3. Moisten the meat with a little lemon juice or cream.

Bake and serve

  1. Sprinkle bread crumbs over the top.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until slightly browned.

  3. Serve with lobster butter.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Lobster + buttertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  4. Lemon + breadtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,445 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Lobster + breadtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together736 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster
Provides the main meat, which is shredded and returned to the shells for serving.
Lemon juice or cream
Adds moisture to the shredded meat so it does not dry out in the oven.
Bread crumbs
Form a topping that browns in the oven, adding color and a crisp texture.
Lobster butter
Adds richness and flavor when served alongside the baked lobster.

The step that matters

Bake until slightly browned. Lobster meat is already cooked, so the bake is mainly to warm it and brown the crumbs. Overbaking toughens the delicate meat and dries it out.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, bread, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, bread, butter. 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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