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Dessert

Creamed Lobster

A lobster dish cooked in butter, cream, salt, cayenne pepper, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lobster and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,050 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Creamed Lobster

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the cold boiled lobster into pieces.

  2. In a chafing dish, melt the butter.

Make the sauce

  1. Add salt, cayenne, and cream to the melted butter.

  2. Once boiling, stir in the cornstarch blended with 2 tablespoons of cream.

  3. Cook for about 2 minutes, then add sherry and serve.

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. Lobster + creamtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

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

  3. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  5. Pepper + sherrytop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and rich flavour.
Cream
Forms the body of the sauce and adds richness and moisture.
Cornstarch
Thickens the cream into a smooth, creamy sauce when heated.
Cold boiled lobster
Provides the main protein and sweet, delicate flavour.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in the cornstarch and cook gently. Cornstarch must be blended with cream first so it does not clump, then it needs to come to a boil and cook briefly to fully thicken. Undercooked starch leaves a raw, floury taste and a thin sauce.

“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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