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Lobster Farce

A creamy lobster filling baked in shells with breadcrumbs and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 cream sauce

  1. Heat the cream in a double boiler.

  2. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  3. Add the flour, cayenne pepper, mace, and salt to the butter.

  4. Stir this mixture into the hot cream and let it boil.

Assemble and bake

  1. Combine the cream mixture with the lobster.

  2. Fill the lobster shells with the mixture.

  3. Top with bread crumbs and bits of butter.

  4. Brown in the oven and 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
Forms the moist, rich base of the sauce that binds the lobster.
Butter
Carries the flour and adds richness and flavor to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the cream into a sauce that holds the lobster together.
Lobster
Provides the main filling, with its flesh set gently by the warm sauce.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden-brown crust on top during baking.

The step that matters

Stir the flour mixture into the hot cream and let it boil. Flour must be fully mixed into the fat before it meets the liquid, and the sauce must boil briefly so the starch swells and thickens. Adding it lumpy or skipping the boil leaves a thin, floury sauce.

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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