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Savoky Lobster

Lobster cooked in butter, mustard, cayenne, sherry, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Savoky Lobster

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a chafing dish, melt the butter.

  2. Add dry mustard, salt, and cayenne pepper; stir well.

  3. Add the lobster meat and heat until smoking hot.

  4. Stir in sherry and lemon juice; cook for 1 minute.

  5. Serve immediately.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  3. Mustard + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Mustard + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together855 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster meat
Forms the main body of the dish and carries the flavour of the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying the mustard and cayenne through the dish.
Sherry
Adds aroma and a subtle sweetness and depth to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and lobster.

The step that matters

Stir in sherry and lemon juice; cook for 1 minute.. Cooking only briefly keeps the lobster tender and the liquids fresh. Alcohol and acid added to very hot fat can lose their aroma quickly, and overcooking toughens lobster protein.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, meat, sherry, lemon):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, meat, sherry, lemon. 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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