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Fricasse of Lobster

A creamy lobster dish with peas, served on toast or in ramekins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Fricasse of Lobster

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, stir the butter and flour together until smooth like a paste.

  2. Add the cream, salt, red pepper, lemon juice, and parsley, and bring to a boil.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the cooked lobster, cut into dice, and let it boil for a few minutes.

  2. Before serving, add the peas.

  3. Serve on toast, in the shell, or in ramekins.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  4. Peas + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,005 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Lobster meat
Forms the main body of the dish and provides its seafood flavor.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries flavor through the roux.
Flour
Thickens the cream into a smooth sauce when cooked with the butter.
Cream
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and adds richness and body.
Peas
Add a sweet, fresh contrast to the rich sauce and lobster.

The step that matters

Bring the sauce to a boil while stirring. Flour thickens liquid only when its starch granules are heated in the liquid and swollen. Stirring keeps the roux smooth and prevents lumps from forming as the cream thickens.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, meat, pepper, butter, lemon, flour, parsley):

  1. Pistachiofits better
  2. Walnutfits better
  3. Almondfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, meat, pepper, butter, lemon, flour, parsley. 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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