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Deviled Lobster

A baked lobster dish with butter, flour, mustard, cayenne, milk, and bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. 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 the lobster

  1. Remove the meat from the lobster and cut it into fine pieces.

Make the sauce

  1. In a stew pan, melt the butter and stir in the flour until smooth.

  2. Add the mustard, cayenne pepper, and milk to the mixture and heat until hot.

  3. Stir in the lobster meat and cook together for 5 minutes.

Bake and serve

  1. Fill small individual dishes with the mixture, sprinkle with bread crumbs, and top with bits of butter.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 5 minutes before serving.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  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
Provides the main meaty filling that gives the dish its flavor and substance.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps carry flavor through the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce that holds the lobster together.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving it a creamy body.
Mustard
Adds sharp, tangy flavor that balances the richness of the sauce.

The step that matters

Heating the flour and butter into the milk. Stir the flour into the melted butter until smooth before adding milk, then heat gently while stirring. Lumps form if flour is not fully blended, and the starch must heat enough to thicken the sauce properly.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, butter, flour, pepper, milk, bread):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, butter, flour, pepper, milk, bread. 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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