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Lobster Pates

A baked pastry shell filled with a mixture of lobster meat, coral, egg, spices, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Lobster Pates

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 pastry

  1. Prepare puff pastry and spread it in deep pâté pans.

  2. Bake the empty pans at 400°F (200°C).

Make the filling

  1. Boil the lobsters well.

  2. Extract and mince the lobster meat finely.

  3. Mix the minced lobster with the mashed coral, grated egg, salt, cayenne, mace or nutmeg, and lemon rind.

  4. Moisten the mixture with cream, butter, or salad oil.

  5. Transfer the mixture to a stew pan. Add a little water.

  6. Heat until it just boils. Remove from heat.

Fill and serve

  1. Fill the baked pâtés with the lobster mixture.

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. Lobster + creamtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,050 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Mace + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,009 recipes
  5. Mace + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,315 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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
Forms the main body of the filling, providing the flavour and the bulk of the pâté.
Lobster coral
Adds richness and a deeper colour to the lobster filling.
Hard-boiled egg
Binds the minced filling and gives it a firmer, more cohesive texture.
Cream, butter, or salad oil
Moistens the mixture, adding fat for a softer, smoother texture.
Puff paste
Forms the flaky, crisp shell that holds the filling.

The step that matters

Heat until it just boils. Overheating the mixture after adding moisture can toughen the egg and dry out the lobster, so it should be heated only until it just boils and then removed from the heat.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, egg, pepper, lemon, cream):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, egg, pepper, lemon, cream. 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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