Skip to main content
Main

Creamed Lobster

Creamed lobster is a dish of lobster meat cooked in a butter, flour, cream, nutmeg, salt, and sherry sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Creamed Lobster

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cut the lobster meat into small pieces.

  2. In a pan, melt the butter over medium heat and stir in the flour until smooth.

  3. Add the lobster, nutmeg, salt, cream, and sherry; stir well.

  4. Cook for 10 minutes, then serve in the cleaned lobster shell or a silver dish.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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
Provides the main protein and sweet, delicate flavour of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and carries flavour through the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cream into a smooth, creamy sauce.
Cream
Supplies liquid and fat that give the sauce its body and silky texture.

The step that matters

Stir the flour into the melted butter until smooth. Cooking flour in fat before adding liquid coats the starch granules so they disperse evenly. Lumps form if the flour is not fully blended, and they are hard to remove once the cream goes in.

“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.

You might also like

Lobster SauceLobster Sauce174 recipesLobster CroquettesLobster Croquettes99 recipesMeat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipesMeatballsMeatballs37 recipes