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Lobster Pudding

A custard-like dish made from lobster meat, bread crumbs, egg yolks, and butter, baked and served with a butter sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter 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 ↓

Lobster Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Pound the lobster meat in a mortar with bread crumbs, egg yolks, and butter.

  2. Season with pepper, salt, and nutmeg, then mix well.

  3. Transfer the mixture to a basin or mold.

  4. Boil for 1 hour.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Pound the lobster spawn with a little butter and ½ tablespoon water.

  2. Mix the sauce with melted butter.

  3. Pour the sauce over the pudding 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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 flavor and the bulk of the pudding.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the pudding a soft, set body.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture and help it set when heated.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the pudding and sauce.

The step that matters

Boil for 1 hour. Egg yolks set with gentle, steady heat. Boiling too hard or too long can make the pudding dense, rubbery, or cause it to crack, so keep the water at a steady simmer.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Parsleyfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Tarragonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, meat, bread, egg, butter, pepper. 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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