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Deviled Lobster

Deviled Lobster is a lobster dish served hot, filled with a creamy mixture of lobster, egg yolks, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Deviled 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.

Prepare

  1. In a hot cream sauce, combine the lobster, mashed egg yolks, parsley, salt, cayenne, and nutmeg.

  2. Fill the lobster shell sections with the mixture.

  3. Dust the tops with buttered cracker crumbs.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until browned.

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

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

  2. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Lobster + saucetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  5. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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, providing the dish's core texture and flavor.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Mashed into the sauce to thicken and enrich the filling with a creamy texture.
Cream sauce
Binds the lobster and yolks into a moist, spoonable filling that stays tender when baked.
Buttered cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, golden topping through browning in the oven.

The step that matters

Bake until browned. The filling is already hot and cooked, so the bake is mainly for browning the topping. Over-baking can dry the cream sauce and toughen the lobster, while under-baking leaves the crumbs pale.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, meat, pepper, egg, nutmeg, cream, sauce):

  1. Tarragonfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Celeryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, meat, pepper, egg, nutmeg, cream, sauce. 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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