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Lobster Farce

A creamy lobster filling topped with breadcrumbs and browned in the oven.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and lobster are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,050 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Lobster Farce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Heat the cream over a double boiler.

  2. In a saucepan, melt the butter, then add the flour, cayenne pepper, mace, and salt.

  3. Stir the mixture into the hot cream and let it boil briefly.

Fill and bake

  1. Fill the lobster shells with the mixture.

  2. Top with bread crumbs and a little melted butter, then brown in the oven.

  3. Serve hot.

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. Cream + lobstertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

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

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

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Cream
Makes the sauce rich and smooth, giving the filling moisture and body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and carries flavor through the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the cream into a binding sauce that holds the lobster together.
Lobster
Provides the main meaty filling and the dish's characteristic sweet flavor.

The step that matters

Stir the mixture into the hot cream and let it boil briefly. Flour thickens only when it reaches a boil, so boiling briefly fully cooks the starch and sets the sauce. Without it, the filling can stay thin and taste raw-floury.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, butter, flour, pepper, lobster, 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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