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Scalloped Lobster

A baked dish of lobster pieces layered with butter, bread crumbs, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Scalloped Lobster

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the dish

  1. Butter a pudding dish.

Layer and bake

  1. Layer lobster meat in the dish without cutting it.

  2. Sprinkle with pepper, coarse sea salt, and lemon juice.

  3. Add a layer of fine bread crumbs with lumps of butter.

  4. Repeat with another layer of lobster and finish with bread crumbs on top.

  5. Pour 1 pint of cream or milk over the layers.

  6. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes and serve hot.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster meat
Forms the main body of the dish and provides its delicate, sweet flavor.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the bread crumbs brown as they bake.
Fine bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden topping and soak up some of the liquid.
Cream or milk
Provides moisture and a rich, tender texture as the layers bake.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet flavor of the lobster.

The step that matters

Pour the cream or milk over the layers. The liquid needs to reach the layers evenly so the dish bakes moist rather than dry. Pouring over the top after layering lets the bread crumbs absorb some liquid while the crust on top still browns in the oven.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, meat, pepper, butter, bread, cream):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Grapefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, meat, pepper, butter, bread, 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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