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Lobster Au Gratin

A baked lobster dish with Bechamel sauce, cayenne pepper, bread crumbs, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lobster and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,095 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Lobster Au Gratin

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 filling

  1. Split the lobster and remove all the meat, cutting it into dice-sized pieces.

  2. Mix the lobster meat with the cream and coral, then combine with the Bechamel Sauce and sprinkle with cayenne pepper.

  3. Warm the mixture gently.

Fill and bake

  1. Fill the body and tail shells of the three small lobsters with the mixture.

  2. Sprinkle bread crumbs over each shell and add small pieces of butter on top.

  3. Place in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 3 to 4 minutes until hot, then serve.

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Lobster + buttertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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 meat and flavour of the filling, cut into pieces that hold their shape.
Bechamel sauce
Creamy base that binds the lobster and keeps the filling moist.
Bread crumbs
Forms a crisp topping that browns in the oven.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the crumbs brown as they heat.

The step that matters

Warm the mixture gently. The lobster meat is already cooked, so prolonged or intense heat would toughen it. Gentle warming heats the filling through while keeping the meat tender and the sauce smooth.

“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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