Skip to main content
Main

Roulette, Lobster

A lobster roulade made by boiling lobster, cooking shells with butter, water, flour, mace, sugar, bouillon, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Roulette, Lobster

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Boil the lobsters.

  2. Remove the lobster meat.

  3. Chop the lobster meat.

  4. Pound the shells with butter.

Make the sauce

  1. Set the shells on the fire with water.

  2. Boil the shells for 15 minutes.

  3. Add flour, mace, and sugar to the shells.

  4. Stir in bouillon until the mixture is thick.

  5. Add the chopped lobster and salt to the mixture.

  6. Remove from heat.

  7. Let the mixture cool completely.

  8. Shape as desired.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Lobster + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together116 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

Lobsters
Provide the main meat and flavour of the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour when pounded with the shells.
Flour
Thickens the mixture as it cooks with the liquid.

The step that matters

Stir in bouillon until the mixture is thick. Flour must be stirred continuously while cooking in liquid so it thickens smoothly without lumps. Once thick, the mixture sets as it cools, which is what allows it to be shaped.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, butter, flour, sugar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, butter, flour, sugar. 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.

You might also like

Lobster SauceLobster Sauce174 recipesLobster CroquettesLobster Croquettes99 recipesLobster BallsLobster Balls7 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes