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Lobster Fricassee

A lobster fricassee made with boiled lobster, soup, milk, lemon, butter, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 ↓

Lobster Fricassee

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Cut the lobster into dice.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the soup, pepper, and salt.

  2. Heat the mixture until hot.

  3. Add the lobster and cook gently for 5 minutes.

  4. Stir in the lemon juice.

  5. In another vessel, heat the milk.

  6. Stir in the floured butter.

  7. Bring the mixture to a boil.

Combine and serve

  1. Pour the milk mixture into a deep bowl.

  2. Add the lobster and stir well.

  3. Transfer to a deep dish 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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Meat + lobstertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together909 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster
Provides the main meaty texture and sweet flavour of the dish.
Soup
Forms the savoury liquid base that carries the other ingredients.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softens the richness of the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and, rolled in flour, helps thicken the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich flavours of the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring in the floured butter. Flour-coated butter must be fully incorporated and brought to a boil so the starch swells and thickens the sauce evenly. Adding it to liquid without stirring can leave lumps, and simmering too briefly can leave a raw, floury taste.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, lobster, milk, butter, flour, pepper. 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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