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Beoiled Live Lobster

Broiled live lobster prepared by cutting, cleaning, and broiling, served with butter or maitre d'hotel butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Beoiled Live Lobster

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Lay the lobster on its stomach and hold it firmly with a towel if needed.

  2. With a sharp knife, make a quick cut between the back and the tail to kill the lobster. Alternatively, plunge the lobster headfirst into boiling water for 5 minutes.

  3. Make a deep incision from the mouth through the body and tail, dividing it in half.

  4. Remove the coral and stomach, leaving the liver.

  5. Take out the intestinal vein from the tail.

  6. Crack the claw shells with a mallet.

Broil and serve

  1. Place the lobster on a greased wire broiler close to hot coals.

  2. Brush the flesh with melted butter.

  3. Broil for 8 minutes on the flesh side. Turn the lobster. Broil for 6 minutes on the shell side.

  4. Serve immediately with melted butter or maitre d'hotel butter made by creaming butter with salt, lemon juice, parsley, and paprika.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

  5. Lobster + parsleytop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together890 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster
Its flesh turns firm and opaque as it cooks, giving the dish its main texture.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the flesh and carries the flavour of the maitre d'hotel butter.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and sweet lobster meat.

The step that matters

Broil on the flesh side first, then the shell side. Cooking the flesh side first with the shell facing away from the heat helps the delicate meat cook through gently. Turning it too early or leaving it too long can leave the flesh dry or tough.

“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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