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A Fricassee of Lobsters

A fricassee of lobster made with lobster meat, stock, mace, lemon, butter, flour, and optional cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

A Fricassee of Lobsters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Boil the lobsters, then remove the meat from the claws and tail, cutting it into square or long pieces.

  2. Extract the meat from the lobster body, ensuring to take all the red from a coral lobster.

Make the sauce

  1. In a pot, combine enough meat stock to cover the lobster meat, adding a blade of mace and lemon peel; bring to a boil.

  2. Thicken the stock with butter and flour, then add the lobster meat once boiling.

  3. Ensure the sauce is thick, adding a little thick sweet cream if desired.

Garnish and serve

  1. Garnish the dish with the ends of the small claws and sliced lemon.

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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Lobster + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together909 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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 meat
Forms the main body of the dish and provides its delicate, sweet flavour.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and adds richness and smoothness to the mixture.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a sauce with body.
Meat stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and carries the seasoning.
Thick sweet cream
Adds richness and helps thicken and smooth the sauce, if used.

The step that matters

Thicken the stock with butter and flour. Flour must be cooked into the butter and stock so it swells and thickens evenly; added raw or unevenly it leaves lumps or a thin, floury sauce.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, meat, lemon, butter, flour, egg, 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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