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Buttered Lobster

A lobster dish with butter, vinegar or lemon, cayenne pepper, mustard, and a hard‑boiled egg served on lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Remove the meat from the boiled lobster and cut it into small pieces.

  2. Sift the coral over the lobster meat.

Make and serve

  1. Mix in the liver, vinegar or lemon juice, butter, cayenne pepper, and made mustard.

  2. Heat the mixture in a blazer until thoroughly hot.

  3. 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.

  1. Mustard + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

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

  2. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

  5. 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 flavor and balances the richness of the butter.
Lobster liver
Contributes a deep, concentrated seafood flavor to the mixture.
Lobster coral
Adds a rich, savory flavor and a softer texture to the dish.

The step that matters

Heat the mixture until thoroughly hot. Gentle heating lets the butter and liver blend smoothly without overcooking the delicate lobster meat or causing the butter to separate.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Shallotfits about as well
  2. Horseradishfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Lettucethe original

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