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Lobster Pudding

A custard-like dish made from boiled lobster meat, eggs, milk, and seasonings, baked in a ham-lined dish and served with anchovy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and anchovy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,057 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Lobster Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Boil the lobsters.

  2. Remove the meat.

  3. Pound the meat in a mortar.

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, mix the lobster meat with the beaten eggs and milk to create a custard-like mixture.

  2. Season the mixture with coarse sea salt and cinnamon.

  3. Add Worcestershire sauce and bread crumbs to the mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Line a dish with ham or salt pork.

  2. Pour the lobster mixture into the lined dish.

  3. Cook until set.

  4. Serve with anchovy sauce.

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. Sauce + anchovytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Lobster + anchovytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together470 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Bread + hamtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Lobsters
Provides the main body and flavour of the pudding.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set it into a custard as they cook.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness, creating a custard-like texture with the eggs.
Bread or cracker crumbs
Absorb liquid and help give the pudding body and a tender structure.

The step that matters

Cook until set. Egg proteins coagulate as the custard heats. Overcooking makes the eggs curdle and turn grainy and watery, so stop once the pudding is just firm.

Swap the cinnamon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, egg, milk, sauce, bread, ham, anchovy):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Cinnamonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, egg, milk, sauce, bread, ham, anchovy. 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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