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Scalloped Lobster

A baked lobster dish with a creamy butter and flour sauce, seasoned with salt, cayenne, paprika, and lemon, topped with breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Scalloped Lobster

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook until smooth.

  3. Slowly add the stock and cream, stirring until smooth and creamy.

  4. Season with salt, cayenne, and paprika.

Fill and bake

  1. Add the lobster meat and mix well.

  2. Fill lobster shells with the mixture.

  3. Squeeze lemon juice over each filled shell and sprinkle with bread crumbs.

  4. Dot with butter and bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until browned.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lobster + creamtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,050 recipes

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 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. Lobster + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together909 recipes

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

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

Lobster meat
Forms the main body of the filling and provides the dish's flavour.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and helps the topping brown in the oven.
Flour
Thickens the stock and cream into a smooth, stable sauce.
Veal or chicken stock
Gives the sauce its liquid base and savoury depth.
Rich cream
Adds richness and body, giving the sauce a creamy texture.

The step that matters

Stirring the stock and cream into the roux. Adding liquid slowly while stirring keeps the flour evenly dispersed, so the sauce becomes smooth instead of lumpy. Cooking the flour briefly first removes its raw taste and gives the sauce thickening power.

“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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