Name: Buttered Lobster
Ingredients: meat from 1 boiled lobster; ⅓ cup butter; 2 tablespoons vinegar or 3 tablespoons lemon juice; ¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper; ¼ teaspoon made mustard; cup-shaped leaves of lettuce; ¼ hard-boiled egg

Why it works: Mustard and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,356 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Buttered Lobster

Ingredients

meat from 1 boiled lobster
⅓ cup butter
2 tablespoons vinegar or 3 tablespoons lemon juice
¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper
¼ teaspoon made mustard
cup-shaped leaves of lettuce
¼ hard-boiled egg

Directions

Remove the meat from the boiled lobster and cut it into small pieces.
Sift the coral over the lobster meat.
Mix in the liver, vinegar or lemon juice, butter, cayenne pepper, and made mustard.
Heat the mixture in a blazer until thoroughly hot.
Serve on cup-shaped leaves of lettuce, topped with a quarter of a hard-boiled egg.

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.

Mustard + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,356 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,067 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,430 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,037 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Meat + mustardtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together855 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter: Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the lobster mixture.
Vinegar or lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the lobster.
Lobster meat: Provides the main protein and the dish's core flavour.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, lobster, butter, vinegar, pepper, mustard, egg):

Shallotfits about as well
Horseradishfits about as well
Capsicumfits about as well
Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, lobster, butter, vinegar, pepper, mustard, egg. 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.