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Lobster Farce

A creamy lobster mixture baked with buttered crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lobster and cream 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA warm oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a warm oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the lobster

  1. Boil the lobsters for 25 minutes.

  2. Remove the meat from the shells and cut it into pieces.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a pan and stir in the flour until it turns yellow, not brown.

  2. Add the cream and season with salt and pepper.

  3. Boil the mixture until thick, stirring constantly.

  4. Remove from heat, add the lobster meat, and chill in the refrigerator for 2 to 3 hours.

Bake and serve

  1. Butter ramekins and fill them with the lobster mixture.

  2. Sprinkle with bread or cracker crumbs and dot with small pieces of butter.

  3. Bake in a warm oven at 350°F (175°C) for about 20 minutes until brown.

  4. 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. Lobster + creamtop 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. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

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

Lobsters
Provide the main meat that gives the farce its flavor and body.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and flavor, and browns the crumb topping.
Flour
Cooked with butter, it thickens the cream into a stable binding sauce.
Sweet cream
Forms the base of the sauce, adding richness and moisture to the mixture.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour in the butter. Stirring the flour into the butter until just yellow creates a roux that thickens smoothly. Browning it gives a nutty colour and weaker thickening, changing the sauce.

“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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